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From a Cornisli Window 



AT. QUILLER- COUCH 

AUTHOR OF 

'TWO SIDES OF THE FACE," "THE WESTCOTES ' 

" DEA.D man's rock" 

ETC. 



NEW YORK 

P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 

31 WEST 23RD STREET 

1906 






Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith, Quay Street. 






DEDICATION 



My dear William Archer, 

Severe and ruthlessly honest man that you are, 
you will find that the levities and the gravities of 
this book do not accord, and will say so. 

I plead only that they were written at intervals, 
and in part for recreation, during years in w^hich 
their author has striven to maintain a cheerful 
mind while a popular philosophy which he believed 
to be cheap took possession of men and translated 
itself into politics which he knew to be nasty. I 
may summarise it, in its own jargon, as the 
philosophy of the Superman, and succinctly describe 
it as an attempt to stretch a part of the Darwinian 
hypothesis and make it cover the whole of man's 
life and conduct. I need not remind you how 
fatally its doctrine has flattered, in our time and 
in our country, the worst instincts of the half- 
educated : but let us remove it from all spheres in 
which we are interested and contemplate it as 



DEDICATION 



expounded by an American Insurance " Lobbyist," 
a few days ago, before the Armstrong Committee : — 

'' The Insurance world to-day is the greatest financial 
proposition in the United States; and, as great affairs 
always do, it commands a higher law.''' 

I have read precisel}^ the same doctrine in a 
University Sermon preached by an Archbishop : 
but there its point was confused by pietistic rhetoric; 
the point being that in life, which is a struggle, 
success has in itself something divine, by virtue of 
which it can be to itself a law of right and wrong ; 
and (inferentially) that a man is relieved of the 
noble obligation to command himself so soon and 
in so far as he is rich enough or strong enough to 
command other people. 

But why (you will ask) do I drag this doctrine 
into a dedication ? Because, my dear Archer, I 
have fought against it for close upon seventeen 
years ; because seventeen years is no small slice 
of a man's life — rather, so long a time that it has 
taught me to prize my bruises and prefer that, if 
an3^body hereafter care to know me, he shall know 
me as one whose spirit took its cheer in intervals 
of a fight against detestable things ; that — let him 
rank me in talent never so low beside my con- 
temporaries who preached this doctrine — he shall at 



DEDICATION 



least have no excuse but to acquit me of being one 

with them in mind or purpose ; and lastly, because 

in these times few things have brought me such 

comfort (stern comfort!) as I have derived from 

your criticism, so hospitable to ideas, so inflexible 

in judging right from wrong. As I have lived 

lonelier it has been better for me, and a solace 

beyond your guessing, to have been reminded that 

criticism still lives amongst us and has a Roman 

spirit. 

A. T. QUILLER-COUCH 



The Haven, 

FOWEY, 

April 3rd, 1906, 



January 



SHOULD any reader be puzzled by the title of 
this discursive volume, the following verses 
may provide him with an explanation. They were 
written some time ago for a lady who had requested, 
required, requisitioned (I forget the precise shade of 
the imperative) something for her album. " We are 
in the last ages of the world," wrote Charles Lamb 
to Barry Cornwall, "when St. Paul prophesied that 
women should be ' headstrong, lovers of their own 
will, having albums. ' " 

BEATUS POSSIDENS. 

I can't afford a mile of sward, 
Parterres and peacocks gay ; 

For velvet lawns and marble fauns 
Mere authors cannot pay. 

And so I went and pitched my tent 

Above a harbour fair, 
Where vessels picturesquely rigg'd 

Obligingly repair. 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



The harbour is not mine at all: 

I make it so — what odds ? 
And gulls unwitting on my wall 

Serve me for garden-gods. 

By ships that ride below kaleid- 

oscopically changed, 
Unto my mind each day I find 

My garden rearranged. 

These, madam, are my daffodils, 

My pinks, my hollyhocks, 
My herds upon a hundred hills. 

My phloxes and my flocks. 

And when some day you deign to pay 

The call that 's overdue, 
I '11 wave a landlord's easy hand 

And say, "Admire my view!" 

Now I do not deny that a part of the content 
expressed in these lines may come of resignation. 
In some moods, were I to indulge them, it were 
pleasant to fancy myself owner of a vast estate, 
champaign and woodland ; able to ride from sea to 
sea without stepping off my own acres, with villeins 
and bondmen, privileges of sak and soke, infangthef, 
outfangthef, rents, tolls, dues, royalties, and a private 
gallows for autograph-hunters. These things, how- 
ever, did not come to me by inheritance, and for 



JANUARY 



a number of sufficient reasons I have not amassed 
them. As for those other ambitions which fill the 
dreams of every healthy boy, a number of them had 
become of faint importance even before a break- 
down of health seemed definitely to forbid their 
attainment. Here at home, far from London, with 
restored strength, I find myself less concerned with 
them than are my friends and neighbours, yet more 
keenly interested than ever in life and letters, art 
and politics — all that men and women are saying 
and doing. Only the centre of gravity has shifted, 
so to speak. 

I dare say, then, that resignation may have 
some share in this content; but if so *tis an 
unconscious and happy one. A man who has 
been writing novels for a good part of his life 
should at least be able to sympathise with various 
kinds of men ; and, for an example or two, I can 
understand — 

1. Why Alexander cried (if he ever did) because 

he had no second world to conquer. 

2. Why Shakespeare, as an Englishman, wanted 

a coat of arms and a respectable estate in 
his own native country town. 

3. What and how deep are the feelings beneath 

that cri du cceur of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's 
*' Old Squire " — 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



" I like the hunting of the hare 
Better than that of the fox ; 
I like the joyous morning air, 
And the crowing of the cocks. 

" I covet not a wider range 

Than these dear manors give ; 
I take my pleasures without change, 
And as I lived I live. 

*' Nor has the world a better thing, 
Though one should search it round, 
Than thus to live one's own sole king 
Upon one's own sole ground. 

** I like the hunting of the hare ; 
It brings me day by day 
The memory of old days as fair, 
With dead men past away. 

**To these as homeward still I ply. 
And pass the churchyard gate, 
Where all are laid as I must lie, 
I stop and raise my hat. 

** I like the hunting of the hare : 
New sports I hold in scorn. 
I like to be as my fathers were 
In the days ere I was born." 

What — to start another hare — were Goldsmith's 
feelings when he wrote — 



JANUARY 



"And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue 
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 
I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
Here to return — and die at home at last." 

5. With what heart Don Quixote rode forth to 

tilt at sheep and windmills, and again with 
what heart in that saddest of all last chapters 
he bade his friends look not for this year's 
birds in last year's nests. 

6. Why the young man went away sadly, because 

he had great possessions and could not see 
his way to bestowing them all on the poor; 
why, on the contrary, St. Paulinus of Nola 
and St. Francis of Assisi joyfully renounced 
their wealth ; what Prudhon meant by saying 
that "property is theft"; and what a poor 
Welsh clergyman of the seventeenth century 
by proclaiming in verse and prose that he 
was heir of all the world, and properties, 
hedges, boundaries, landmarks meant nothing 
to him, since all was his that his soul enjoyed; 
yes, and even what inspired him to pen this 
golden sentence — 

" Yoti' will never enjoy the world aright till the sea 
itself flow eth in your veins ^ till you are clothed with 
the heavens and crowned with the stars." 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



My window, then, looks out from a small library 
upon a small harbour frequented by ships of all 
nations — British, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, 
Russian, French, German, Italian, with now and 
then an American or a Greek — and upon a shore 
which I love because it is my native country. Of 
all views I reckon that of a harbour the most 
fascinating and the most easeful, for it combines 
perpetual change with perpetual repose. It amuses 
like a panorama and soothes like an opiate, and 
when you have realised this you will understand why 
so many thousands of men around this island appear 
to spend all their time in watching tidal water. 
Lest you should suspect me of taking a merely 
dilettante interest in the view, I must add that I am 
a Harbour Commissioner. 

As for the house, it is a plain one; indeed, very 
like the house a child draws on a slate, and therefore 
pleasing even externally to me, who prefer the 
classical to any Gothic style of architecture. Why 
so many strangers mistake it with its modest 
dimensions for a hotel, I cannot tell you. I found 
one in the pantry the other day searching for a 
brandy-and-soda ; another rang the dining-room bell 
and dumbfoundered the maid by asking what we had 
for lunch ; and a third (a lady) cried when I broke 
to her that I had no sitting-room to let. We make 
it a rule to send out a chair whenever some unknown 



JANUARY. 



invader walks into the garden and prepares to make 
a water-colour sketch of the view. 

There are some, too, whose behaviour cannot be 
reconciled with the hallucination of a hotel, and 
they must take the house for a public institution 
of some kind, though of what kind I cannot guess. 
There was an extremely bashful youth, for instance, 
who roamed the garden for a while on the day after 
the late Duke of Cambridge's funeral, and, suddenly 
dashing in by the back door, wanted to know why 
our flag was not at half-mast. There was also a 
lady who called on the excuse that she had made 
a life-study of the Brontes, and after opining (in 
a guarded manner) that they came, originally, from 
somewhere in Yorkshire, desired to be informed 
how many servants we kept. I have sometimes 
thought of rechristening bur house The Hotel of the 
Four Seasons, and thereby releasing its true name 
(The Haven) to a friend who covets it for his own. 

On the whole, however, these visitors disturb the 
house and the view from my window very little. 
The upper halves of them, as they pass up and 
down the road, appear above my garden wall much 
as the shadows that passed in Plato's cave. They 
come, enjoy their holiday, and go, leaving the 
window intent upon the harbour, its own folk and 
its own business. 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



And now for the book, which is really not a book 
at all, but a chapter of one. 

Last autumn I returned from a holiday to find 
that the publishing season had begun. This was 
announced by a stack of new books, review copies 
and presentation copies, awaiting me on my window- 
seat. I regarded it sourly. A holiday is the most 
unsettling thing in the world. At the end of it 
I regain the well-worn chair with a sigh of pleasure 
and reach for the familiar tobacco-jar, wondering 
how I could have been fool enough to leave them ; 
yet somehow this lively sense of repurchased habit 
does not go far enough and compel me to work. 
Being at home is a game, and so good a game that 
I play at it merely, rearranging my shelves and,, 
under pretence of dealing with arrears of corres- 
pondence, skimming the literary papers and book- 
catalogues found amid the pile of letters. 

It happened that the first postal-wrapper to be 
broken enclosed a copy of The Academy, and The 
Academy opened with this sentence : " Since our last 
issue we have received one hundred and nineteen 
new books and reprints." I looked across to the 
pile on my window-seat and felt it to be insignificant, 
though it interfered with my view of the English 
Channel. One hundred and nineteen books in a 
single week ! Yet who was I to exclaim at their 
number ? — I, who (it appeared) had contributed one 



JANUARY 



of them ? With that I remembered something 
which had happened just before my holiday, and 
began to reflect on it, for the first time seriously. 

A publisher had asked me for a complete list of 
my published works, to print it on the fly-leaf of 
another of them. I sat down with the best intention 
and compiled it for him, and, in honest oblivion, 
omitted a couple — of books, mind you — not of 
pamphlets, reviews, stray articles, short stories, or 
any such trifles, but of books solemnly written for 
this and future ages, solemnly printed, bound, and 
put into circulation at the shops and libraries. (Here, 
for the due impressiveness of the tale, it becomes 
necessary to tell you that their author is an indolent 
and painful writer, slow at the best of times.) 

Well, the discovery that I had forgotten two of 
my own books at first amused and then set me 
thinking. "Here you are," said I to myself, a "writer 
of sorts; and it's no use to pretend that you don't 
wish to be remembered for a while after you are 
dead and done with." 

" Quite right," the other part of me assented 
cheerfully. 

" Well, then," urged the inquisitor, " this is a bad 
look-out. If you had been born a Dumas — I am 
speaking of fecundity, if you please, and of nothing 
else — if you had been born a Dumas, and could rattle 
off a romance in a fortnight, you might be excused 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



for not keeping tally of your productions. Pitiful, 
dilatory worker that you are, if yoic cannot remember 
them, how can you expect the world (good Heavens!) 
to take the trouble ? " 

" I suppose it won't," responded the other part of 
me, somewhat dashed; then, picking up its spirits 
again, "But, anyhow, I shall know where to lay the 
blame." 

" On yourself? " 

*' Most assuredly not." 

"Where, then? " 

" Why, on the pubhshers." 

"Ah, of course ! " (This with fine irony.) 

" Yes, on the publishers. Most authors do this 
during life, and now I begin to see that all authors 
do it sooner or later. For my part, I shall defer it 
to the future state." 

"Why?" 

" Obviously because there will be no publishers 
thereabouts to contradict me." 

" And of what will you accuse them ? " 

" That they never issued my work in the form it 
deserved." 

"I see. Poor fellow ! You have the ' Edinburgh ' 
Stevenson or something of that sort on your mind, 
and are filled with nasty envy." 

Upon this the other part of me fairly lost its 
temper. 



JANUARY 

" The ' Edinburgh ' Stevenson ! The * Edinburgh ' 

Ste , and you have known me all these years ! 

The ' Edinburgh ' Stevenson is a mighty handsome 
edition of a mighty fine writer, but I have no more 
desire to promenade the ages in that costume than 
to jump the moon. No, I am not going to break 
any more of the furniture. I am handing you this 
chair that you may seat yourself and listen . . . 
Now ! The book which I shall accuse my publishers 
of not having produced will be in one volume " 

" Come, come. Modesty is all very well, but don't 
overdo it." 

" folio." 

"Oh!" 

" of three thousand odd pages, printed (blunt 

type) in double columns, and here and there in 
triple." 

"O— oh!" 

" with marginalia by other hands, and foot- 
notes running sometimes to. twenty thousand words, 
and, including above six thousand quotations from the 
best poets — every one, in short, which has given me 
pleasure of a certain quality, whether gentle or acute, 
at one time or another in my life." 

"! ! ! ^' 

" the whole profusely, not to say extravagantly, 

adorned with woodcuts in the text, not to mention 
fifty or sixty full-page illustrations in copper." 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW. 



" By eminent artists ? " 

" Some of them by eminent artists, for the reason 
only that I number such among my friends ; the rest 
by amateurs and members of my household who 
would help, out of mere affection, in raising this 
monument." 

"They would do it execrably." 

**I dare say; but that would not matter in the 
least. The book should be bound in leather and 
provided with serviceable clasps, as well as with a 
couple of inner pockets for maps and charts. The 
maps should contain plenty of sea, with monsters 
rising from it — leviathans and sea-serpents — as they 
do in Speed's map of Cornwall which hangs in the 
hall." 

"Your book will need a window-seat to hold 
it." 

"Ah, now you talk intelligently! It was designed 
for a window-seat, and its fortunate possessor will 
take care to provide one. Have you any further 
objections ? " 

" Only this : that a book of such a size written by 
one man (I make the objection as Httle personal as 
I can) must perforce contain many dull pages." 

" Hundreds of them ; whole reams of dull pages." 

" They will be skipped." 

"They will be inserted with that object.' 

"Oh!" 



JANUARY 

'* It is one of the conditions of becoming a 
classic." 

" Who will read you ? " 

*' Look here. Do you remember the story of that 
old fellow — a Dutchman, I think — who took a fancy 
to be buried in the church porch of his native 
town, that he might hear the feet of the townsfolk, 
generation after generation, passing over his head to 
divine service ? " 

"Well?" 

" Well. I shall stand on my shelf, bound in 
good leather, between (say) Bayle's Dictionary and 
Sibrandus Schnafnaburgejisis, his Delectable Treatise; 
and if some day, when the master of the house has 
been coaxed by his womenfolk to take a holiday, and 
they descend upon the books, which he (the humbug) 
never reads, belabour and bang the dust out of 
them and flap them with dusters, and all with that 
vindictiveness which is the good housewife's right 
attitude towards literature " 

" Had you not better draw breath ? " 

" Thank you. I will ; for the end of the protasis 
lies yet some way off. If, I say, some child of the 
family, having chosen me out of the heap as a 
capital fellow for a booby-trap, shall open me by 
hazard and, attracted by the pictures, lug me off to 
the window-seat, why then God bless the child ! 
I shall come to my own. He will not understand 

13 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW. 



much at the time, but he will remember me with 
affection, and in due course he will give me to his 
daughter among her wedding presents (much to 
her annoyance, but the bridegroom will soothe her). 
This will happen through several generations until 
I find myself an heirloom. . . ." 

" You begin to assume that by this time you will 
be valuable. Also permit me to remark that you 
have sHpped into the present indicative." 

" As for the present indicative, I think you began 
it." 

''No." 

"Yes. But it doesn't matter. I begin precisely 
at the right moment to assume a value which will 
be attached to me, not for my own sake, but on 
account of dear grandpapa's book-plate and auto- 
graph on the fly-leaf. (He was the humbug who 
never read me — a literary person ; he acquired me as 
a * review copy,' and only forbore to dispose of me 
because at the current railway rates I should not 
have fetched the cost of carriage.)" 

" Why talk of hindrances to publishing such a 
book, when you know full well it will never be 
written ? " 

" I thought you would be driven to some such 
stupid knock-down argument. Whether or not 
the book will ever be finished is a question that 
lies on the knees of the gods. I am writing at it 

H 



JANUARY. 



every day. And just such a book was written once 
and even published; as I discovered the other day 
in an essay by Mr. Austin Dobson. The author^ 
I grant you, was a Dutchman (Mr. Dobson calls 
him * Vader Cats,') and the book contains everything 
from a long didactic poem on Marriage (I also have 
written a long didactic poem on Marriage) to a page 
on Children's Games. (My book shall have a chapter 
on Children's Games, with their proper tunes.) As 
for poetry — poetry, says Mr. Dobson, with our 
Dutch poet is not by any means a trickling rill 
from Helicon : ' it is an inundation a la mode du pays^ 
a flood in a flat land, covering everything far and 
near with its sluggish waters.' As for the illustrations, 
listen to this for the kind of thing I demand : — 

" Perhaps the most interesting of these is to be found 
in the large head-piece to the above-mentioned Children's 
Games, the background of which exhibits the great square 
of Middleburgh, with its old Gothic houses and central 
clump of trees. This is, moreover, as delightful a picture 
as any in the gallery. Down the middle of the fore- 
ground, which is filled by a crowd of figures, advances a 
regiment of little Dutchmen, marching to drum and fife,, 
and led by a fire-eating captain of fifteen. Around this 
central group are dispersed knots of children pla3ring 
leap-frog, flying kites, blowing bubbles, whipping tops, 
walking on stilts, skipping, and the like. In one corner 
the children are busy with blind man's buff; in the other 
the girls, with their stiff head-dresses and vandyked 

15 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



aprons, are occupied with their dolls. Under the pump 
some seventeenth-century equivalent for chuck-farthing 
seems to be going on vigorously ; and, not to be behind- 
hand in the fun, two little fellows in the distance are 
standing upon their heads. The whole composition is 
full of life and movement, and — so conservative is child- 
hood — might, but for the costume and scene, represent a 
playground of to-day." 

"Such are the pictures which shall emerge, like 
islands, among my dull pages. And there shall 
be other pages, to be found for the looking. . . . 
I must make another call upon your memory, my 
friend, and refer it to a story of Hans Andersen's 
Avhich fascinated the pair of us in childhood, when 
we were not really a pair but inseparables, and 
before you had grown wise ; the story of the Student 
and the Goblin who lodged at the Butterman's. 
The Student, at the expense of his dinner, had 
rescued a book from the butter-tub and taken it off 
to his garret, and that night the Goblin, overcome 
by curiosity, peeped through the keyhole, and lo ! 
the garret was full of light. Forth and up from the 
book shot a beam of light, which grew into the 
trunk of a mighty tree, and threw out branches over 
the bowed head of the student ; and every leaf was 
fresh, and every flower a face, and every fruit a star, 
and music sang in the branches. Well, there shall 
be even such pages in my book." 

i6 



JANUARY 



"Excuse me," said I, "but, knowing your indolence, 
I begin to tire of the future indicative, which (allow 
me to repeat) you first employed in this discussion." 

"I did not," said the other part of me stoutly. 
*' And if I did, 'tis a trick of the trade. You of all 
people ought to know that I write romances." 



I do not at all demur to having the value of my books 
enhanced by the contributions of others — by dear 
grandpapa's autograph on the fly-leaf, for example. 
But it annoys me to be blamed for other folks' 
opinions. 

The other day a visitor called and discoursed with 
me during the greater part of a wet afternoon. H^ 
had come for an interview — " dreadful trade," as 
Edgar said of samphire-gathering — and I wondered, 
as he took his departure, what on earth he would 
find to write about : for I love to smoke and listen to 
other men's opinions, and can boast with Montaigne 
that during these invasive times my door has stood 
open to all comers. He was a good fellow, too ; 
having brains and using them : and I made him an 
admirable listener. 

It amused me, some while after, to read the 
interview and learn that / had done the talking 
and uttered a number of trenchant sayings upon 
female novelists. But the amusement changed to 

17 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



dismay when the ladies began to retort. For 
No. I started with an airy restatement of what I 
had never said, and No. 2 (who had missed to 
read the interview) misinterpreted No. i.'s para- 
phrase; and by these and other processes within 
a week my digestive silence had passed through a 
dozen removes, and was incurring the just execration 
of a whole sex. I began to see that my old college 
motto — Quod taciturn velis nemini dixeris — which had 
always seemed to me to err, if at all, on the side of 
excess, fell short of adequacy to these strenuous 
times. 

I have not kept the letters ; but a friend of mine, 
Mr. Algernon Dexter, has summarised a very similar 
experience and cast it into chapters, which he allows 
me to print here. He heads them — 

HUNTING THE DRAG 

CHAPTER I. 

Scene: The chastely -furnished writing-room of Mr. Algernon 
Dexter, a well-known male novelist. Bust of Pallas over 
practicable door L.U.E. Books adorn the walls f inter- 
spersed with portraits of female relatives. Mr. Dexter 
discovered with Interviewer. Mr. D., poker in hand, is 
bending over the fire , above which runs the legend ^ carved 
in Roman letters across the mantelpiece , "Ne fodias ignem 



Interviewer (pulling out his watch) : " Dear me ! Only 
five minutes to catch my train ! And I had several other 

i8 



JANUARY 



questions to ask. I suppose, now, it 's too late to discuss 
the Higher Education of Women ? " 

Mr. D. {smiling) : "Well, I think there's hardly time. 
It will take you a good four minutes to get to the station." 

Interviewer : "And I must get my typewriter out of 
the cloakroom. Good-day, then, Mr. Dexter!" (They 
shake hands and part with mutual esteem.) 

CHAPTER II. 

Extract from ^^The Daily Post" 

"MONDAY TALKS WITH OUR NOVELISTS— No. MCVI. 
Mr. ALGERNON DEXTER. 

" ' And now, Mr. Dexter,' said I, < what is your opinion 
of the Higher Education of Women ? ' 

'•The noveHst stroked his bronze beard. 'That's a 
large order, eh ? Isn't it rather late in the day to discuss 
Women's Education ? ' And with a humorous gesture 
of despair he dropped the poker." 

CHAPTER III. 

Tuesday's Letter 
Sir,— In your issue of to-day I read with interest an 
account of an interview with Mr. Dexter, the popular 
noveHst, and I observe that gentleman thinks it "rather 
late in the day" to discuss the Higher Education of 
Women. One can only be amused at this flippant dis- 
missal of a subject dear to the hearts of many of us ; 
a movement consecrated by the life-energies — I had 
almost said the life-blood— of a Gladstone, a Sidgwick, 
a Fitch, and a Piatt - Culpepper. Does Mr. Dexter 
really imagine that he can look down on such names as 

19 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



these ? Or are we to conclude that the recent successes 
of *' educated " women in fiction have got on his nerves ? 
To suggest professional jealousy would be going too farj 
no doubt. 

Yours faithfully, 

'' High School." 

chapter iv. 
Wednesday's Letters 

(i) Sir, — I, too, was disgusted with Mr. Algernon 
Dexter's cheap sneer at women's education. He has, 
it seems, ** no opinion " of it. Allow me to point out 
that, whatever his opinion may be, Women's Education 
has come to stay. The time is past when Woman could 
be relegated to the kitchen or the nursery, and told, in 
the words of the poet Byron, that these constituted her 
" whole existence." Not so ; and if Mr. Dexter is 
inclined to doubt it let him read the works of George 
Elliot (Mrs. J. W. Cross) or Marian Crawford. They 
will open his eyes to the task he has undertaken. 
I am, Sir, yours, etc., 

"Audi Alteram Partem.'* 

(2) Sir, — Mr. Algernon Dexter thinks woman's educa- 
tion **a large order" — not a very elegant expression, let 
me say, en passant^ for one who aspires to be known as 
a *' stylist." Still a large order it is, and one that as an 
imperial race we shall be forced to envisage. If our 
children are to be started in life as fit citizens of this 
empire, with a grasp on its manifold and far-reaching 
complexities of interest, and unless the Germans are to 



JANUARY 



beat us, we must provide them with educated mothers. 
" The child is father of the man," but the mother has, 
me judice^ no less influence upon his subsequent career. 
And this is not to be done by putting back the hands of 
the clock, or setting them to make pies and samplers, but 
by raising them to mutually co-operate and further what 
has been aptly termed " The White Man's Burden." 
Such, at any rate, though I may not live to see it, is the 
conviction of 

" A Mus. Doc. OF Forty Years' Standing." 

(3) Sir, — "High School" has done a public service. 
A popular novelist may be licensed to draw on his 
imagination ; but hitting below the belt is another thing, 
whoever wears it. Mr. Dexter's disdainful treatment of 
that eminent educationist, Mr. Platt-Culpepper — who is 
in his grave and therefore unable to reply (so like a 
man !) — can be called nothing less. I hope it will 
receive the silent contempt it deserves. 

Yours indignantly, 

" Mere Woman." 

CHAPTER v. 
Thtirsdays Letters 
(i) Sir, — Your correspondents, with whose indignation 
I am in sympathy, have to me most unaccountably over- 
looked the real gravamen of Mr. Dexter's offence Unlike 
them, I have read several of that gentleman's brochures, 
and can assure you that he once posed as the advocate of 
unbounded license for women in Higher Education, if 
not in other directions. This volte face (I happen to know) 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



will come as a severe disappointment to many ; for we 
had quite counted him one of us. 

" We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him, 
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye," 

shall have, it seems, to " record one lost soul more, one 
more devil's triumph," etc. I subscribe myself, sir, more 
in sorrow than in anger, 

Percy Fladd, 

President, H.W.E.L. 
{Hoxton Wo^nen's Emancipation League). 

(2) Sir, — Why all this beating about the bush ? The 
matter in dispute between Mr. Dexter and his critics 
was summed up long ago by Scotia's premier poet 
(I refer to Robert Burns) in the lines — 

"To make a happy fireside clime 
To weans and wife, 
That 's the true pathos and sublime 
Of human life," 

and vice versa. Your correspondents are too hasty in 
condemning Mr. Dexter. He may have expressed him- 
self awkwardly ; but, as I understood him, he never 
asserted that education necessarily unsexed a woman, if 
kept within limits. "A man 's a man for a' that " ; then 
why not a woman ? At least, so says 

"AuLD Reekie." 

(3) Sir, — Let Mr. Dexter stick to his guns. He is 
not the first who has found the New Woman an unmiti- 
gated nuisance, and I respect him for saying so in no 



JANUARY 

measured terms. Let women, if they want husbands, 
cease to write oratorios and other things in which man 
is, by his very constitution, facile princeps, and let her 
cultivate that desideratum in which she excels— a cosy 
home and a bright smile to greet him on the doorstep 
when he returns from a tiring day in the City. Until 
that is done I, for one, shall remain 

"Unmarried." 

P.S. — Could a woman have composed Shakespeare? 

(4) Sir, — I had no intention of mixing in this corre- 
spondeace, and publicity is naturally distasteful to me. 
Nor do I hold any brief for the Higher Education of 
Womer ; but when I see writer after writer — apparently 
of my own sex — taking refuge in what has been called 
the "base shelter of anonymity," I feel constrained to 
sign mjself, 

Yours faithfully, 

(Mrs.) Rachel Ramsbotham. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Friday's Letters 
(i) S.R, — After reading " Unmarried's " letter, one 
can hardy wonder that he is so. He asks if any woman 
could have written Shakespeare, and insinuates that she 
would be better occupied in meeting him ('* Unmarried ") 
on the d)orstep " with a bright smile." As to that, there 
may be :wo opinions. Everyone to his taste, but for my 
part, if his insufferable male conceit will allow him to 
believe t — I would rather have written Shakespeare a 

23 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



hundred times over, and I am not alone in this view. 
Such men as Mr. Dexter and "Unmarried" are the 
cause why half of us women prefer to remain single ; 
the former may deny it, poker in hand, but murder will 
out. In conclusion, let me add that I have never written 
an oratorio in my life, though I sometimes attend them. 

Yours, etc., 

** Mere Woman." 

(2) Sir, — Allow me to impale Mr. Dexter on the horns 
of a dilemma. Either it is too late in the day to discuss 
woman's education, or it is not. If the latter, why did 
he say it is ? And if the former, why did he begin 
discussing it ? That is how is strikes 

«B.A. (Loud.)." 

(3) Sir, — Re this woman's education discission: 
I write to inquire if there is any law of tte land 
which can hinder a woman from composing Shakespeare 
if she wants to ? 

Yours truly, 

'* Interesied." 

(4) Sir, — Allusion has been made in this corre- 
spondence (I think by Mr. Dexter) to the grave of that 
eminent educationist, the late Platt-Culpepper, vhich is 
situate in the Highgate Cemetery. My interest being 
awakened, I made a pilgrimage to it the other day, and 
was shocked by its neglected condition. The cojing has 
been badly cemented, and a crack extends fnm the 
upper right-hand corner to the base of the plinti, right 
across the inscription. Doubtless a few shillings would 

24 



JANUARY 



repair the damage; but may I suggest, Sir, that some 
worthier memorial is due to this pioneer of woman's 
higher activities ? I have thought of a plain obelisk on 
Shakespeare's Cliff, a locality of which he was ever 
fond; or a small and inconspicuous lighthouse might, 
without complicating the navigation of this part of 
the Channel, serve to remind Enghshmen of one 
who diffused so much light during his all too brief 
career. Choice, however, would depend on the funds 
available, and might be left to an influential com- 
mittee. Meanwhile, could you not open a subscription 
list for the purpose? I enclose stamps for 2S., with 
my card, and prefer to remain, for the present, 

" Haud Immemor.'' 

chapter vii. 

Saturday's Letters 

(i) Sir, — H. Immemor's suggestion clears the air, and 
should persuade Mr. Dexter and his reactionary friends 
to think twice before again inaugurating a crusade which 
can only recoil upon their own heads. I enclose 5s., if 
only as a protest against this un-English " hitting below 
the belt," and am, 

Yours, etc., 

"Practical." 

(2) Sir,— It is only occasionally that I get a glimpse 
of your invaluable paper, and (perhaps, fortunately) 
missed the issues containing Mr. Dexter's diatribes anent 
woman. But what astounds me is their cynical audacity. 
Your correspondents, though not in accord as to tha 

25 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



name of the victim (can it be more than one?) agree 
that, after encouraging her to unbridled license, Mr. 
Dexter turned round and attacked her with a poker — 
whether above or below the belt is surely immaterial. 
'Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true ; but not once or 
twice, I fear me, in " our fair island-story " has a similar 
thing occurred. The unique (I hope) feature in this 
case is the man Dexter's open boast that the incident is 
closed, and it is now ''too late in the day" to reopen it. 
" Too late," indeed ! There is an American poem des- 
cribing how a young woman was raking hay, and an 
elderly judge came by, and wasn't in a position to marry 
her, though he wanted to ; and the whole winds up by 
saying that "too late" are the saddest words in the 
language — especially, I would add, in this connection. 
But, alas ! that men's memories should be so short ! is 
the reflection of 

"A Mother of Seven." 

[This correspondence is now closed, unless Mr. Dexter 
should wish to reply to his numerous critics. We do not 
propose to open a subscription list, at any rate for the 
present. — Ed. Daily PostJ] 



26 



jpebruary 



** A THAT I were lying under the olives ! " — if 
^ I may echo the burthen of a beautiful little 
poem by Mrs. Margaret L. Woods. I have not yet 
consulted Zadkiel: but if I may argue from past 
experience of February — "fill-dyke" — in a week or 
so my window here will be alternately crusted with 
Channel spray and washed clean by lashing south- 
westerly showers ; and a wave will arch itself over 
my garden wall and spoil a promising bed of violets ; 
and I shall grow weary of oilskins, and weary of 
hauling the long-line with icily-cold hands and 
finding no fish. February — Pisces ? The fish, before 
February comes, have left the coast for the warmer 
deeps, and the zodiac is all wrong. Down here in 
the Duchy many believe in Mr. Zadkiel and Old 
Moore. I suppose the dreamy Celt pays a natural 
homage to a fellow-mortal who knows how to make 
up his mind for twelve months ahead. All the 
woman in his nature surrenders to this business- 
like decisiveness. " O man ! " — the exhortation is 
Mr. George Meredith's, or would be if I could 

27 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



remember it precisely — " O man, amorously inclining, 
before all things be positive ! " I have sometimes, 
while turning the pages of Mrs. Beeton's admirable 
cookery book, caught myself envying Mr. Beeton. 
I wonder if her sisters envy Mrs. Zadkiel. She, 
dear lady, no doubt feels that, if it be not in mortals 
to command the weather her husband prophesies for 
August, yet he does better — he deserves it. And, 
after all, a prophecy in some measure depends for 
its success on the mind which receives it. Back in 
the forties — I quote from a small privately-printed 
volume by Sir Richard Tangye — when the potato 
blight first appeared in England, an old farmer in 
the Duchy found this warning in his favourite 
almanack, at the head of the page for August : — 

"And potentates shall tremble and quail." 

Now, ''to quail" in Cornwall still carries its old 
meaning, *' to shrink," " to wither." The farmer 
dug his potatoes with all speed, and next year the 
almanack was richer by a score of subscribers. 

Zadkiel or no Zadkiel, I will suspire, and risk it, 
" O that I were lying under the olives ! " ** O to be 
out of England now that February 's here ! " — for 
indeed this is the time to take the South express and 
be quit of fogs, and loaf and invite your soul upon 
the Mediterranean shore before the carnivals and 
regattas sweep it like a mistral. Nor need you be 

28 



FEBRUARY 



an invalid to taste those joys on which Stevenson 
dilates in that famous little essay in " Virginibus 
Puerisque " (or, as the young American lady preferred 
to call it, " Virginis Pueribusque ") : — 

**Or perhaps he may see a group of washer- women 
relieved, on a spit of shingle, against the blue sea, or 
a meeting of flower-gatherers in the tempered daylight 
of an olive-garden; and something significant or 
monumental in the grouping, something in the harmony 
of faint colour that is always characteristic of the dress 
of these Southern women, will come home to him 
unexpectedly, and awake in him that satisfaction with 
which we tell ourselves that we are richer by one more 
beautiful experience. . . . And then, there is no end 
to the infinite variety of the olive-yards themselves. 
Even the colour is indeterminate, and continually 
shifting : now you would say it was green, now grey, 
now blue; now tree stands above tree, like 'cloud on 
cloud,' massed in filmy indistinctness ; and now, at the 
wind's will, the whole sea of fohage is shaken and broken 
up with little momentary silverings and shadows." 

English poets, too, have been at their best on the 
Riviera : from Cette, where Matthew Arnold painted 
one of the most brilliant little landscapes in our litera- 
ture, along to Genoa, where Tennyson visited and 

" Loved that hall, tho' white and cold, 
Those niched shapes of noble mould, 

A princely people's awful princes. 
The grave, severe Genovese of old." 

29 



FROM A Cornish window 



[I suppose, by the way, that every one who 
has taken the trouble to compare the stanza of 
'' The Daisy " with that of the invitation " To the 
Rev. F. D. Maurice," which immediately follows, 
will have noted the pretty rhythmical difference 
made by the introduction of the double dactyl in 
the closing line of the latter ; the difference between 

" Of olive, aloe, and maize, and vine," 
and 

" Making the little one leap for joy."] 

But let Mrs. Woods resume the strain : — 

" O that I were listening under the olives ! 
So should I hear behind in the woodland 
The peasants talking. Either a woman, 
A wrinkled grandame, stands in the sunshine. 
Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets — 
Large odorous violets — and answers slowly 
A child's swift babble ; or else at noon 
The labourers come. They rest in the shadow, 
Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry. 
Soft speech Proven9al under the olives ! 
Like a queen's raiment from days long perished. 
Breathing aromas of old unremembered 
Perfumes, and shining in dust-covered palaces 
With sudden hints of forgotten splendour — 
So on the Hps of the peasant his language, 
His only now, the tongue of the peasant." 

Say what you will, there is a dignity about these 

30 



FEBRUARY 



Latin races, even in their trivial everyday move- 
ments. They suggest to me, as those lines of Homer 
suggested to Mr. Pater's Marius, thoughts which 
almost seem to be memories of a time when all the 
world was poetic : — 

" Ot ^' OTe B^ Xifievo^ TToXv^evOeos ej/ro9 ikovto 
*Iot/(X liiev aielXavto, Oeaav S' iu vifC imeKaivrj . . « 
'E/c ^e Kai auTol ^aivou eVt prj'^fuui OaXaaar^^J'* 

"And how poetic," says Pater, " the simple incident 
seemed, told just thus ! Homer was always telling 
things after this manner. And one might think 
there had been no effort in it : that here was but 
the almost mechanical transcript of a time naturally, 
intrinsically poetic, a time in which one could hardly 
have spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors 
pulled down their boat without making a picture 
in *the great style' against a sky charged with 
marvels." 

One evening in last February a company of Pro- 
vencal singers, pipers, and tambour players came to 
an hotel in Cannes, and entertained us. They were 
followed next evening by a troupe of German- Swiss 
jodelers ; and oh, the difference to me — and, for 
that matter, to all of us ! It was just the difference 
between passion and silly sentiment — silly and rather 
vulgar sentiment. The merry Swiss boys whooped, 
and smacked their legs, and twirled their merry Swiss 

31 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



girls about, until vengeance overtook them — a ven- 
geance so complete, so surprising, that I can hardly 
nov^ believe what my own eyes saw and my own ears 
heard. One of the merry Swiss girls sang a love- 
ditty with a jodeling refrain, which was supposed to 
be echoed back by her lover afar in the mountains. 
To produce this pleasing illusion, one of the merry 
Swiss boys ascended the staircase, and hid himself 
deep in the corridors of the hotel. All went well up 
to the last verse. Promptly and truly the swain 
echoed his sweetheart's call ; softly it floated down 
to us — down from the imaginary pasture and across 
the imaginary valley. But as the maiden challenged 
for the last time, as her voice lingered on the last 
note of the last verse . . . There hung a Swiss cuckoo- 
clock in the porter's office, and at that very instant 
the mechanical bird lifted its voice, and nine times 
answered ** Cuckoo" on the exact note! "Cuckoo, 
Cuckoo, O word of fear ! " I have known coinci- 
dences, but never one so triumphantly complete. 
The jaw of the Swiss maiden dropped an inch ; 
and, as well as I remember, silence held the com- 
pany for five seconds before we recovered ourselves 
and burst into inextinguishable laughter. 

The one complaint I have to make of the Medi- 
terranean is that it does not in the least resemble a 
real sea; and I daresay that nobody who has lived 



32 



FEBRUARY 

by a real sea will ever be thoroughly content with 
it. Beautiful — oh, beautiful, of course, whether one 
looks across from Costebelle to the lighthouse on 
Porquerolles and the warships in Hyeres Bay; or 
climbs by the Calvary to the lighthouse of la 
Garoupe, and sees on the one side Antibes, on the 
other the Isles de Lerins ; or scans the entrance of 
Toulon Harbour; or counts the tiers of shipping 
alongside the quays at Genoa! But somehow the 
Mediterranean has neither flavour nor sparkle, nor 
even any proper smell. The sea by Biarritz is 
champagne to it. But hear how Hugo draws the 
contrast in time of storm : — 

** Ce n'etaient pas les larges lames de I'Ocean qui vent 
devant elles et qui se deroulent royalement dans I'immen- 
site ; c'etaient des houles courtes, brusques, furieuses. 
L' Ocean est a son aise, il tourne autour du monde ; la 
Mediterranee est dans un vase et le vent la secoue, c'est 
ce qui lui donne cette vague haletante, breve et trapue. 
Le flot se ramasse et lutte. II a autant de colere que le 
flot de rOcean et moins d'espace." 

Also, barring the sardine and anchovy, I must 
confess that the fish of the Mediterranean are what, 
in the Duchy, we should call " poor trade." I don't 
wish to disparage the Bouillabaisse, which is a dish 
for heroes, and deserves all the heroic praises sung 
of it:— 



33 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



** This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is — 

A sort of soup, or broth, or brew, 
Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, 

That Greenwich never could outdo ; 
Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, 

Soles, onions, garhc, roach and dace : 
All these you eat at Terre's tavern, 

In that one dish of Bouillabaisse." 

To be precise, you take a langouste, three rascas 
(an edible but second-rate fish), a slice of conger, 
a fine "chapon," or red rascas, and one or two 
" poissons blancs " (our grey mullet, I take it, would 
be an equivalent). You take a cooking-pot and put 
your langouste in it, together with four spoonfuls of 
olive-oil, an onion and a couple of tomatoes, and 
boil away until he turns red. You then take off the 
pot and add your fish, green herbs, four cloves of 
garlic, and a pinch of saffron, with salt and red 
pepper. Pour in water to cover the surface of the 
fish, and cook for twenty minutes over a fast fire. 
Then take a soup-plate, lay some slices of bread in 
it, and pour the bouillon over the bread. Serve the 
fish separately. Possibly you incline to add, in the 
immortal words of the late Mr. Lear, *' Serve up in a 
clean dish, and throw the whole out of window as 
fast as possible." You would make a great mistake. 
The marvel to me is that no missionary has acclima- 
tised this wonderful dish upon our coasts, where we 

34 



FEBRUARY 

have far better fish for compounding it — red mullet, 
for instance, in place of the rascas ; and whiting, or 
even pollack or grey mullet, in place of the "poissons 
Wanes." For the langouste, a baby lobster might 
serve; and the saffron flavour would be no severe 
trial to us in the Duchy, who are brought up 
(so to say) upon saffron cake. As for Thackeray's 
** dace," I disbelieve in it. No one would add a 
dace (which for table purposes has been likened to 
an old stocking full of mud and pins : or was that a 
tench ?) except to make a rhyme. Even Walton, 
who gives instructions for cooking a chavender or 
chub, is discreetly silent. on the cooking of a dace, 
though he tells us how to catch him. " Serve up in 
a clean dish," he might have added, " and throw 
him out of window as fast as possible." 

"O that I were lying under the olives!" And 
O that to olive orchards (not contiguous) I could 
convey the newspaper men who are almost invariably 
responsible when a shadow of distrust or suspicion 
falls between us Englishmen and the race which 
owns and tills these orchards. "The printing-press," 
says Mr. Barrie, " is either the greatest blessing or 
the greatest curse of modern times, one sometimes 
forgets which." I verily believe that if English 
newspaper editors would nobly resolve to hold their 
peace on French politics, say for two years, France 

35 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



and England would " make friends " as easily as 
Frenchmen and Englishmen *'make friends" to-day.* 
One hears talk of the behaviour of the English 
abroad. But I am convinced that at least one-half 
of their bad manners may be referred to their 
education upon. this newspaper nonsense, or to the 
certainty that no complaint they may make upon 
foreign shortcomings is too silly or too ill-bred to 
be printed in an English newspaper. Here is an 
example. I suppress the name of the writer — a 
lady — in the devout hope that she has repented 
before this. The letter is headed — 

"THE AMENITIES OF RAILWAY TRAVELLING 
IN FRANCE. 

"Sir, — As your newspaper is read in France, may 
I in your columns call attention to what I witnessed 
yesterday ? I left Dinard by the 3.33 p.m. train en route 
for Guingamp, having to change carriages at Lamballe. 
An instant before the train moved off from the station, a 
dying man belonging to the poorest class was thrust into 
our second-class carriage and the door slammed to. The 
poor creature, apparently dying of some wasting disease, 
was absolutely on the point of death, and his ghastly 
appearance naturally alarmed a little girl in the carriage. 
At the next station I got down with my companion 
and changed into a first-class compartment, paying the 
difference. On remonstrating with the guard (sic), he 
admitted that a railway carriage ought not to be turned 
* This was written some time before the entente ccrdiale. 



36 



FEBRUARY 



into an hospital, but added, ' We have no rules to 
prevent it.' 

" I ask, sir, is it decent or human, especially at 
such a time, to thrust dying persons in the last stage 
of poverty into a second-class carriage full of ladies 
and children ? " 

There's a pretty charity for you! "A dying man 
belonging to the poorest class,'' — ^^ Our second-class 
carriage" — here's richness! as Mr. Squeers observed. 
Here's sweetness and light ! But England has no 
monopoly of such manners. There was a poor little 
Cingalese girl in the train by which I travelled 
homeward last February from Genoa and through 
the Mont Cenis. And there were also three English- 
men and a Frenchman— the last apparently (as 
Browning put it) a person of importance in his day, 
for he had a bit of red ribbon in his buttonhole and 
a valet at his heels. At one of the small stations 
near the tunnel our train halted for several minutes ; 
and while the little Cingalese leaned out and gazed 
at the unfamiliar snows — a pathetic figure, if ever 
there was one — the three Englishmen and the 
Frenchman gathered under the carriage door and 
stared up at her just as if she were a show. There 
was no nonsense about the performance — no false 
delicacy : it was good, steady, eye-to-eye staring. 
After three minutes of it, the Frenchman asked 
deliberately, " Where do you come from ? " in a 

37 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



careless, level tone, which did not even convey that 
he was interested in knowing. And because the child 
didn't understand, the three Englishmen laughed. 
Altogether it was an unpleasing but instructive little 
episode. 

No: nastiness has no particular nationality: and 
you will find a great deal of it, of all nationalities, 
on the frontier between France and Italy. I do 
not see that Monte Carlo provides much cause 
for indignation, beyond the tir aux pigeons, which 
is quite abominable. I have timed it for twenty- 
five minutes, and it averaged two birds a minute 
— fifty birds. Of these one escaped, one fluttered 
on to the roof of the railway station and died 
there slowly, under my eyes. The rest were 
killed within the enclosure, some by the first 
barrel, some by the second ; or if they still 
lingered, were retrieved and mouthed by a well- 
trained butcher dog, of no recognisable breed. 
Sometimes, after receiving its wound, a bird would 
walk about for a second or two, apparently unhurt ; 
then suddenly stagger and topple over. Sometimes, 
as the trap opened, a bird would stand dazed. Then 
a ball was trundled at it to compel it to rise. Grey 
breast feathers strewed the whole inclosure, in places 
quite thickly, like a carpet. As for the crowd at the 
tables inside the Casino, it was largely Semitic. 

38 



FEBRUARY 



On the road between Monte Carlo and Monaco, as 
Browning says — 

" It was noses, noses all the way." 

Also it smelt distressingly : but that perhaps was its 
misfortune rather than its fault. It did not seem 
very happy ; nor was it composed of people who 
looked as if they might have attained to distinction, 
or even to ordinary usefulness, by following any other 
pursuit. On the whole, one felt that it might as 
well be gathered here as anywhere else. 

" O that I were lying under the olives ! " But 
since my own garden must content me this year, let 
me conclude with a decent letter of thanks to the 
friend who sent me, from Devonshire, a box of 
violet roots that await the spring in a corner which 
even the waves of the equinox cannot reach : — 

TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME A 
BOX OF VIOLETS. 

Nay, more than violets 

These thoughts of thine, friend ! 

Rather thy reedy brook 

— Taw's tributary — 

At midnight murmuring, 

Descried them, the delicate. 

The dark-eyed goddesses, 

39 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



There by his cressy beds 
Dissolved and dreaming 
Dreams that distilled in a dewdrop 
All the purple of night, 
All the shine of a planet. 

Whereat he whispered ; 
And they arising 
— Of day's forget-me-nots 
The duskier sisters — 
Descended, relinquished 
The orchard, the trout-pool, 
The Druid circles, 
Sheepfolds of Dartmoor, 
Granite and sandstone, 
Torridge and Tamar ; 
By Roughtor, by Dozmare, 
Down the vale of the Fowey 
Moving in silence, 
Brushing the nightshade 
By bridges Cyclopean, 
By Glynn, Lanhydrock, 
Restormel, Lostwithiel, 
Dark woodland, dim water, 

dreaming town — 
Down the vale of the Fowey, 
Each in her exile 
Musing the message — 
Message illumined by love 
As a starlit sorrow — 
Passed, as the shadow of Ruth 
From the land of the Moabite. 

40 



FEBRUARY 



So they came — 
Valley-born, valley-nurtured — 
Came to the tideway, 
The jetties, the anchorage, 
The salt wind piping, 
Snoring in equinox, 
By ships at anchor, 
By quays tormented, 
Storm-bitten streets ; 
Came to the Haven 
Crying, *'Ah, shelter us, 
The strayed ambassadors ! 
Lost legation of love 
On a comfortless coast ! " 

Nay, but a little sleep, 

A little folding 

Of petals to the lull 

Of quiet rainfalls, — 

Here in my garden. 

In angle sheltered 

From north and east wind — 

Softly shall recreate 

The courage of charity, 

Henceforth not to me only 

Breathing the message. 

Clean-breath'd Sirens ! 
Henceforth the mariner, 
Here on the tideway 
Dragging, foul of keel. 
Long-strayed but fortunate, 

41 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Out of the fogs, the vast 
Atlantic solitudes, 
Shall, by the hawser-pin 
Waiting the signal — 
" Leave-go-anchor ! '* 
Scent the familiar 
Fragrance of home ; 
So in a long breath 
Bless us unknowingly : 
Bless them, the violets. 
Bless me, the gardener, 
Bless thee, the giver. 



My business (I remind myself) behind the window 
is not to scribble verses : my business, or a part of 
it, is to criticise poetry, which involves reading 
poetry. But why should anyone read poetry in 
these days? 

Well, one answer is that nobody does. 

I look around my shelves and, brushing this answer 
aside as flippant, change the form of my question. 
Why do we read poetry ? What do we find that it 
does for us? We take to it (I presume) some 
natural need, and it answers that need. But what 
is the need ? And how does poetry answer it ? 

Clearly it is not a need of knowledge, or of what 
we usually understand by knowledge. We do not 
go to a poem as we go to a work on Chemistry or 
Physics, to add to our knowledge of the world 



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about us. For example, Keats' glorious lines to the 
Nightingale — 

*' Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird ..." 

are unchallengeable poetry ; but they add nothing to 
our stock of information. Indeed, as Mr. Bridges 
pointed out the other day, the information they 
contain is mostly inaccurate or fanciful. Man is, as 
a matter of fact, quite as immortal as a nightingale in 
every sense but that of sameness. And as for the 

" Magic casements opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn," 

Science tells us that no such things exist in this or 
any other ascertained world. So, when Tennyson 
tells us that birds in the high Hall garden were 
crying, " Maud, Maud, Maud," or that 

" There has fallen a splendid tear 
From the passion-flower at the gate : 
She is coming, my dove, my dear; 
She is coming, my life, my fate ; 
The red rose cries, * She is near, she is near ' ; 
And the white rose weeps, • She is late ' . . ." 

the poetry is unchallengeable, but the information by 
scientific stardards of truth is demonstrably false, 
and even absurd. On the other hand (see Coleridge's 
Biographia Literaria, c. xiv.), the famous lines — 

43 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



*' Thirty days hath September, 
April, June, and November, . . ." 

though packed with trustworthy information, are 
quite as demonstrably unpoetical. The famous 
senior wrangler who returned a borrowed volume of 
Paradise Lost with the remark that he did not see 
what it proved, was right — so far as he went. And 
conversely (as he would have said) no sensible man 
would think to improve Newton's Principia and 
Darwin's Origin of Species by casting them into 
blank verse ; or Euclid's Elements by writing them 
out in ballad metre — 

The king sits in Dunfermline town, 
Drinking the blude-red wine ; 
* O wha will rear me an equilateral triangle 
Upon a given straight line ? ' 

We may be sure that Poetry does not aim to do what 
Science, with other methods, can do much better 
What craving, then, does it answer ? And if the crav- 
ing be for knowledge of a kind, then of what kind ? 

The question is serious. We agree — at least I 
assume this — that men have souls as well as 
intellects ; that above and beyond the life we know 
and can describe and reduce to laws and formulas 
there exists a spiritual life of which our intellect is 
unable to render account. We have (it is believed) 
affinity with this spiritual world, and we hold it by 

44 



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virtue of something spiritual within us, which we 
call the soul. You may disbelieve in this spiritual 
region and remain, I dare say, an estimable citizen ; 
but I cannot see what business you have with 
Poetry, or what satisfaction you draw from it. Nay, 
Poetry demands that you believe something further ; 
which is, that in this spiritual region resides and is 
laid up that eternal scheme of things, that universal 
order, of which the phenomena of this world are but 
fragments, if indeed they are not mere shadows. 

A hard matter to believe, no doubt ! We see this 
world so clearly; the spiritual world so dimly, so 
rarely, if at all ! We may fortify ourselves with the 
reminder (to be found in Blanco White's famous 
sonnet) that the first man who lived on earth had to 
wait for the darkness before he saw the stars and 
guessed that the Universe extended beyond this 
earth— 

*' Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal' d 
Within thy beams, O Sun ! or who could find, 
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood reveal'd, 

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ? " 

He may, or may not, believe that the same duty 
governs his infinitesimal activity and the motions of 
the heavenly bodies— 

"Awake, my soul, and with the sun 
Thy daily stage of duty run . , ." 

45 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



— that his duty is one with that of which Words- 
worth sang — 

" Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are 
fresh and strong." 

But in a higher order of some sort, and his duty of 
conforming with it, he doss not seem able to avoid 
believing. 

This, then, is the need which Poetry answers. 
It offers to bring men knowledge of this universal 
order, and to help them in rectifying and adjusting 
their lives to it. It is for gleams of this spiritual 
country that the poets watch — 

*' The gleam, 
The light that never was on sea or land. . . ." 

"I am Merlin,** sang Tennyson, its life-long watcher, 
in his old age — 

•*I am Merlin, 
And I am dying ; 
I am Merlin, 
Who follow the gleam." 

They do not claim to see it always. It appears 
to them at rare and happy intervals, as the Vision 
of the Grail to the Knights of the Round Table. 
" Poetry," said Shelley, " is the record of the 

46 



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best and happiest moments of the happiest and 

best minds." 

* * * * 

If this be the need, how have our poets been 
answering it of late years ? How, for instance, did 
they answer it during the South African War, 
when (according to our newspapers) there was 
plenty of patriotic emotion available to inspire 
the great organ of national song ? Well, let us 
kick up what dust we will over '' Imperial ideals," 
we must admit, at least, that these ideals are not 
yet " accepted of song " : they have not inspired 
poetry in any way adequate to the nobility claimed 
for them. Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Henley saluted 
the Boer War in verse of much truculence, but 
no quality; and when Mr. Swinburne and Mr. 
Henley lacked quality one began to inquire into 
causes. Mr. Kipling's Absent-minded Beggars, 
Muddied Oafs, Goths and Huns, invited one 
to consider why he should so often be first- 
rate when neglecting or giving the lie to his pet 
political doctrines, and invariably below form when 
enforcing them. For the rest, the Warden of 
Glenalmond bubbled and squeaked, and Mr. Alfred 
Austin, like the man at the piano, kept on doing his 
best. It all came to nothing : as poetry it never 
began to be more than null. Mr. Hardy wrote a 
few mournfully memorable lines on the seamy side of 

47 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Avar. Mr. Owen Seaman (who may pass for our 
contemporary Aristophanes) was smart and witty 
at the expense of those whose philosophy goes a 
little deeper than surface-polish. One man alone — 
Mr. Henry Newbolt — struck a note which even his 
opponents had to respect. The rest exhibited plenty 
of the turbulence of passion, but none of the gravity 
of thoughtful emotion. I don't doubt they were, one 
and all, honest in their way. But as poetry their 
utterances were negligible. As writers of real 
poetry the Anti-Jingoes, and especially the Celts, 
held and still hold the field. 

I will not adduce poets of admitted eminence — 
Mr. Watson, for instance, or Mr. Yeats — to prove my 
case. I am content to go to a young poet who has 
his spurs to win, and will ask you to consider this little 
poem, and especially its final stanza. He calls it — 

A CHARGE 

If thou hast squander'd years to grave a gem 
Commissioned by thy absent Lord, and while 

'Tis incomplete, 
Others would bribe thy needy skill to them — 

Dismiss them to the street ! 

Should'st thou at last discover Beauty's grove, 
At last be panting on the fragrant verge, 
But in the track. 
Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love — 
Turn, at her bidding, back. 



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When round thy ship in tempest Hell appears, 
And every spectre mutters up more dire 

To snatch control 
And loose to madness thy deep-kennell'd Fears, — 

Then to the helm, O Soul ! 

Last, if upon the cold, green-mantling sea 
Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, 

Both castaway. 
And one must perish — let it not be he 

Whom thou art sworn to obey. 

The author of these lines is a Mr. Herbert Trench, 
who (as I say) has his spurs to win. Yet I defy you 
to read them without recognising a note of high 
seriousness which is common to our great poets and 
utterly foreign to our modern bards of empire. The 
man, you will perceive, dares to talk quite bold:y 
about the human soul. Now you will search long in 
our Jingo bards for any recognition of the human 
soul : the very word is unpopular. And as men of 
eminence write, so lesser wits imitate. A while ago I 
picked up a popular magazine, and happened on 
these verses — fluently written and, beyond a doubt, 
honestly meant. They are in praise of King 
Henry VIII. :— 

King Harry played at tennis, and he threw the dice 

a-main. 
And did all things that seemed to him for his own 

and England's gain ; 

49 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



He would not be talked to lightly, he would not be 

checked or chid ; 
And he got what things he dreamed to get, and did — 

what things he did. 

When Harry played at tennis it was well for this 

our Isle — 
He cocked his nose at Interdicts ; he 'stablished us 

the while — 
He was lustful ; he was vengeful ; he was hot and 

hard and proud ; 
But he set his England fairly in the sight of all the 

crowd. 

^ * a- •^' 

So Harry played at tennis, and we perfected the 

game 
Which astonied swaggering Spaniards when the fat 

Armada came. 
And possession did he give us of our souls in sturdi- 

ness ; 
And he gave us peace from priesthood : and he gave 

us English Bess ! 

When Harry played at tennis we began to know 

this thing — 
That a mighty people prospers in a mighty-minded 

king. 
We boasted not our righteousness — we took on us 

our sin, 
For Bluff Hal was just an Englishman who played 

the game to win. 

You will perceive that in the third stanza the 
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word '' soul " occurs : and I invite you to compare 
this author's idea of a soul with Mr. Trench's. This 
author will have nothing to do with the old advice 
about doing justice, loving mercy, and walking 
humbly before God. The old notion that to conquer 
self is a higher feat than to take a city he dismisses 
out of hand. " Be lustful be vengeful," says he, 
*' but play the game to win, and you have m}^ 
applause. Get what you want, set England fairly 
in sight of the crowd, and you are a mighty-minded 
man." Now the first and last comment upon such 
a doctrine must be that, if a God exist, it is false. 
It sets up a part to override the whole : it flaunts 
a local success against the austere majesty of Divine 
law. In brief, it foolishly derides the universal, 
saying that it chooses to consider the particular as 
more important. But it is not. Poetry's concern 
is with the universal : and what makes the Celts 
(however much you may dislike them) the most 
considerable force in Enghsh poetry at this moment 
is that they occupy themselves with that universal 
truth, which, before any technical accomplishment, 
is the guarantee of ^ood poetry. 

Now, when you tell yourself that the days of 
" English Bess " were jolly fine empire-making days, 
and produced great poets (Shakespeare, for example) 
worthy of them ; and when you go on to reflect that 
these also are jolly fine empire-making days, but 

51 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



that somehow Mr. Austin is your laureate, and that 
the only poetry which counts is being written by 
men out of harmony with your present empire- 
making mood, the easiest plan (if you happen to 
think the difference worth considering) will be to 
call the Muse a traitress, and declare that every 
poem better than Mr. Austin's is a vote given to — 
whatever nation your Yellow Press happens to be 
insulting at this moment. But, if you care to look 
a little deeper, you may find that some difference 
in your methods of empire-making is partly account- 
able for the change. A true poet must cling to 
universal truth ; and by insulting it (as, for example, 
by importing into present-day politics the spirit 
which would excuse the iniquities of Henry VIII. 
on the ground that ' he gave us English Bess ' ! ) you 
are driving the true poet out of your midst. Read 
over the verses above quoted, and then repeat to 
yourself, slowly, these lines : — 

" Last, if upon the cold, green-mantling sea 
Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, 

Both castaway, 
And one must perish — let it not be he 

Whom thou art sworn to obey." 

I ask no more. If a man cannot see the difference 
at once, I almost despair of making him perceive 
why poetry refuses just now even more obstinattly 
than trade (if that be possible) to " follow the flag." 

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It will not follow, because you are waving the flag 
over self-deception. You may be as blithe as Plato 
in casting out the poets from your commonwealth — 
though for other reasons than his. You may be as 
blithe as Dogberry in determining, of reading and 
writing, that they may appear when there is no need 
of such vanity. But you are certainly driving them 
forth to say, in place of '* O beloved city of Cecrops 1 " 
" O beloved city of God ! " There was a time, not 
many years ago, when an honest poet could have 
used both cries together and deemed that he meant 
the same thing by the two. But the two cries 
to-day have an utterly different meaning — and by 
your compulsion or by the compulsion of such 
politics as you have come to tolerate. 

And therefore the young poet whom I have quoted 
has joined the band of those poets whom we are 
forcing out of the city, to leave our ideals to the fate 
which, since the world began, has overtaken all 
ideals vrhich could not get themselves " accepted by 
song." Even as we drum these poets out we know 
that they are the only ones worth reckoning with, 
and that man cannot support himself upon assur- 
ances that he is the strongest fellow in the world, 
and the richest, and owns the biggest house, and 
pays the biggest rates, and wins whatever game he 
plays at, and stands so high in his clothes that while 
the Southern Cross rises over his hat-brim it is 

53 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



already broad day on the seat of his breeches. For 
that is what it all comes to : and the sentence upon 
the man who neglects the warning of these poets, 
while he heaps up great possessions, is still, '' Thou 
fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee." 
And where is the national soul you would choose, 
at that hasty summons, to present for inspection, 
having to stand your trial upon it ? Try Park Lane, 
or run and knock up the Laureate, and then come 
and report your success ! 



Weeks ago I was greatly reproached b}^ a corre- 
spondent for misusing the word '' Celtic," and 
informed that to call Mr. Yeats or Mr. Trench 
a Celt is a grave abuse of ethnical terms ; that a 
notable percentage of the names connected with the 
'Xeltic Revival" — Hyde, Sigerson, Atkinson, Stokes 
— are not Celtic at all but Teutonic; that, in short, I 
have been following the multitude to speak loosely. 
Well, I confess it, and I will confess further that 
the lax use of the word " Celt " ill beseems one who 
has been irritated often enough by the attempts of 
well-meaning but muddle-headed people who get 
hold of this or that poet and straightly assign this 
or that quality of his verse to a certain set of 
corpuscles in his mixed blood. Although I believe 
that my correspondent is too hasty in labelling 

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men's descent from their names — for the mother has 
usually some share in producing a child ; although 
I believe that Mr. Yeats, for instance, inherits Cornish 
blood on one side, even if Irish be denied him on 
the other; yet the rebuke contains some justice. 

Still, I must maintain that these well-meaning 
theorists err only in applying a broad distinction 
vv^ith overmuch nicety. There is, after all, a certain 
quality in a poem of Blake's, or a prose passage of 
Charlotte Bronte's, which a critic is not only unable 
to ignore, but which — if he has any '^comparative" 
sense — he finds himself accounting for by saying, 
*' This man, or this woman, must be a Celt or have 
some admixture of Celtic blood." I say quite 
coiiiidently that quality cannot be ignored. You 
open (let us say) a volume of Blake, and your eye 
falls on these two lines — 

" When the stars threw down their spears 
And watered heaven with their tears," 

and at once you are aware of an imagination different 
in kind from the imagination you would recognise 
as English. Let us, if you please, rule out ail 
debate of superiority ; let us take Shakespeare for 
comparison, and Shakespeare at his best : — - 

" These our actors, 
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
Are RTclled into air, into thin air ; 

55 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

Finer poetry than this I can hardly find in English 
to quote for you. But fine as it is, will you not 
observe the matter-of-factness (call it healthy, if 
you will, and I shall not gainsay you) beneath 
Shakespeare's noble language ? It says divinely 
what it has to say ; and what it has to say is full 
of solemn thought. But, for better or worse (or, 
rather, without question of better or worse), Blake's 
imagination is moving on a different plane. We 
may think it an uncomfortably superhuman plane ; 
but let us note the difference, and note further that 
this plane was habitual with Blake. Now because 
of his immense powers we are accustomed to think 
of Shakespeare as almost superhuman : we pay 
that tribute to his genius, his strength, and the 
enormous impression they produce on us. But 
a single couplet of Blake's will carry more of this 
uncanny superhuman imagination than the whole 
five acts of Hamlet. vSo great is Shakespeare, 
that he tempts us to think him capable of any 

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flight of wing; but set down a line or two of 

Blake's — 

"A robin redbreast in a cage 
Puts all heaven in a rage . . . 
A skylark wounded on the wing 
Doth make a cherub cease to sing." 

— and, simple as the thought is, at once you feel it 
to lie outside the range of Shakespeare's philosophy. 
Shakespeare's men are fine, brave, companionable 
fellows, full of passionate love, jealousy, ambition ; 
of humour, gravity, strength of mind; of laughter 
and rage, of the joy and stress of living. But self- 
sacrifice scarcely enters into their notion of the 
scheme of things, and they are by no means men 
to go to death for an idea. We remember what 
figure Shakespeare made of Sir John Oldcastle, and 
I wish we could forget what figure he made of Joan 
of Arc, Within the bounds of his philosophy — the 
philosophy, gloriously stated, of ordinary brave, full- 
blooded men — he is a great encourager of virtue; 
and so such lines as — 

" The expense of spirit in a waste of shame 
Is lust in action ..." 

are thoroughly Shakespearean, while such lines as — 

"A robin redbreast in a cage 
Puts all heaven in a rage . . . " 

are as little Shakespearean in thought as in phrasing. 
57 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



He can tell us that 

"We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

He can muse on that sleep to come : — 

" To die, to sleep ; 
To sleep ; perchance to dream ; aye, there 's the rub ; 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give us pause,'' 

But that even in this life we may be more truly 
ourselves when dreaming than when waking — that 
v/hat we dream may perchance turn out to be more 
real and more important than what we do — such 
a thought overpasses his imaginative range ; or, 
since to dogmatise on his imaginative range is 
highly dangerous, let us be content with sa3ang 
that it lies outside his temperament, and that he 
would have hit on such a thought only to dismiss 
it with contempt. So when we open a book of 
poems and come upon a m.onarch crying out that 

'•A wild and foolish labourer is a king, 
To do and do and do and never dream," 

we know that we are hearkening to a note which is 
not Shakespearean at all, not practical, not English. 
And we want a name for that note. 

I have followed the multitude to call it Celtic 

5« 



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because in practice when we come upon this note 
we are pretty safe to discover that the poet who 
utters it has Celtic blood in him (Blake's poetry, 
for instance, told me that he must be an Irishman 
before ever I reflected that his name was Irish, or 
thought of looking up his descent). Since, however, 
the blood of most men in these islands is by this 
time mixed with many strains : since also, though 
the note be not native with him, nothing forbids 
even a pure-blooded Anglo-Saxon from learning it 
and assimilating it : lastly, since there is obvious 
inconvenience in using the same word for an ethnical 
delimitation and a psychological, when their bound- 
aries do not exactly correspond — and if some Anglo- 
Saxons have the "Celtic" note it is certain that 
many thousands of Celts have not ; why then I shall 
be glad enough to use a better and a handier and a 
more exact, if only some clever person will provide 
it. 

Meanwhile, let it be understood that in speaking 
of a " Celtic " note I accuse no fellow-creature of 
being an Irishman, Scotsman, Welshman, Manxman, 
Cornishman, or Breton. The poet will as a rule 
turn out to be one or other of these, or at least to 
have a traceable strain of Celtic blood in him. But 
to the note only is the term applied. Now this note 
may be recognised by many tokens; but the first 
and chiefest is its insistence upon man's brotherhood 

59 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



with bird and beast, star and flower, everything, in 
short, which we loosely call "nature," his brotherhood 
even with spirits and angels, as one of an infinite 
number of microcosms reflecting a common image 
of God. And poetry which holds by this creed will 
hardly be subservient to societies and governments 
and legalised doctrines and conventions ; it will hold 
to them by a long and loose chain, if at all. It flies 
high enough, at any rate, to take a bird's-eye view 
of all manner of things which in the temple, the 
palace, or the market-place, have come to be taken: 
as axiomatic. It eyes them with an extraordinary 
"dissoluteness" — if you will give that word its- 
literal meaning. It sees that some accepted virtues 
carry no reflection of heaven ; it sees that heaven, 
on the other hand — so infinite is its ca.re — may shake 
with anger from bound to bound at the sight of a 
caged bird. It sees that the souls of living things, 
even of the least conspicuous, reach up by chains 
and are anchored in heaven, while ''great" events 
slide by on the surface of this skimming planet with 
empires and their ordinances. 



"And so the Emperor went in the procession under 
the splendid canopy. And all the people in the streets 
and at the windows said, 'Bless us! what matchless 
new clothes our Emperor has ! ' But he hasn't any- 
thing on ! ' cried a little child. ' Dear me, just listen 

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to what the httle innocent says,' observed his father, 
and the people whispered to each other what the child 
had said. ' He hasn't anything on ! ' they began to 
shout at last. This made the Emperor's flesh creep, 
because he thought that they were right ; but he said 
to himself, ' I must keep it up through the procession, 
anyhow.' And he walked on still more majestically, 
and the Chamberlains walked behind and carried the 
train, though there was none to carry." 

This parable of the Emperor without clothes can 
be matched, for simplicity and searching directness, 
against any parable outside of the Gospels, and it 
agrees with the Divine parables in exalting the 
wisdom of a child. I will not dare to discuss that 
wisdom here. I observe that when the poets 
preach it we tender them our applause. We applaud 
Vaughan's lines: — 

" Happy those early days, when I 
Shin'd in my angel-infancy ... 
When yet I had not walk'd above 
A mile or two from my first love, 
And looking back — at that short space- 
Could see a glimpse of His bright face ; 
When on some gilded cloud or flow'r 
My gazing soul would dwell an hour, 
And in those weaker glories spy 
Some shadows of eternity. ..." 

We applaud Wordsworth's glorious ode — 
6i 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
The Soul that rises with us, our Hie's Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And Cometh from afar : 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home : 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! . . ." 

We applaud even old John Earle's prose when he 
tells us of a Child that — 

" The elder he grows, he is a stair lower from God ; 
and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches. 
He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse ; 
the one imitates his pureness, the other falls into his 
simplicity. . . . His father hath writ him as his own 
little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that 
he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he 
hath outlived. . . . Could he put off his body with his 
little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and 
exchanged but one heaven for another." 

But while we applaud this pretty confident attri- 
bution of divine wisdom to children, we are much 
too cautious to translate it into practice. " It is far 
too shadowy a notion," says Wordsworth prudently, 
"to be recommended to faith as more than an 
element in our instincts of immortality ; " and he 
might have added that, while the Child may be 
Father of the Man, the Man reserves the privilege 

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of Spanking. Even so I observe that, while able 
to agree cordially with Christ on the necessity of 
becoming as little children as a condition of entering 
the Kingdom of Heaven, we are not so injudicious 
as to act upon any such belief; nay, we find 
ourselves obliged to revise and re -interpret the^ 
wisdom of the Gospels when we find it too 
impracticably childish. When Christ, for instance, 
forbids oaths of all kinds, we feel sure He cannot be 
serious, or we should have to upset a settled practice 
of the courts. And as for resisting no evil and 
forgiving our enemies, why, good Heavens ! what 
would become of our splendid armaments ! The 
suggestion, put so down rightly, is quite too wild. 
In short, as a distinguished Bishop put it, society 
could not exist for forty-eight hours on the lines 
laid down in the Sermon on the Mount. (I forget 
the Bishop's exact words, but they amounted to 
a complete and thoroughly common -sense repu- 
diation of Gospel Christianity.) 

No; it is obvious that, in so far as the Divine 
teaching touches on conduct, we must as practical 
men correct it, and with a special look-out for its 
indulgent misunderstanding of children. Children, 
as a matter of experience, have no sense of the 
rights of property. They steal apples. 

And yet — there must be something in this 
downright wisdom of childishness since Christ went 

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FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



(as we must believe) out of His way to lay such 
stress on it ; and since our own hearts respond 
so readily when Vaughan or Wordsworth claim 
divinity for it. We cannot of course go the length 
of believing that the great, wise, and eminent men 
of our day are engaged one and all in the pursuit 
of shadows. ** Shadows we are and shadows we 
pursue" sounded an exquisitely solemn note in an 
election speech; but after all, we must take the 
world as we find it, and the world as we find 
it has its own recognised rewards. No success 
attended the poet who wrote that — 

"Those little new-invented things — 
Cups, saddles, crowns, are childish joys, 
So ribbands are and rings, 
Which all our happiness destroys. 

Nor God 

In His abode, 

Nor saints, nor little boys, 
Nor Angels made them ; only foolish men, 
Grown mad with custom, on those toys 
Which more increase their wants to date. . . ." 

He found no publisher, and they have been rescued 
by accident after two hundred years of oblivion. (It 
appears, nevertheless, that he was a happy man.) 

And yet — I repeat — since we respond to it so 
readily, whether in welcome or in irritation, there 
must be something in this claim set up for childish 

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simplicity; and I cannot help thinking it fortunate 
and salutary for us that the Celtic poets have taken 
to sounding its note so boldly. Whatever else they 
do, on the conventional ideals of this generation 
they speak out with an uncompromising and highly 
disconcerting directness. As I said just now, they 
are held, if at all, by a long and loose chain to the 
graven images to which we stand bound arm-to-arm 
and foot-to-foot. They fly far enough aloof to take 
a bird's-eye view. What they see they declare with 
a boldness which is the more impressive for being 
unconscious. And they declare that they see us tied 
to stupid material gods, and wholly blind to ideas. 
* * * * 

P.S. — I made bold enough to say in the course of 
these remarks that Euclid's Elements could hardly be 
improved by writing them out in ballad metre. A 
friend, to whom I happened to repeat this assertion, 
cast doubt on it and challenged me to prove it. I 
do so with pleasure in the following — 




65 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



NEW BALLAD OF SIR PATRICK SPENS. 

The King sits in Dunfermline toun 
Drinking the blude-red wine : 

" O wha will rear me an equilateral triangle 
Upon a given straight line ? " 

O up and spake an eldern knight, 
Sat at the King's right knee — 

"Of a' the clerks by Granta side 
Sir Patrick bears the gree. 

" 'Tis he was taught by the Tod-huntere 
Tho' not at the tod-hunting ; 

Yet gif that he be given a line, 
He '11 do as brave a thing." 

Our King has written a braid letter 

To Cambrigge or thereby, 
And there it found Sir Patrick Spens 

Evaluating tt. 

He hadna warked his quotient 

A point but barely three, 
There stepped to him a Httle foot-page 

And louted on his knee. 

The first word that Sir Patrick read, 

'' Plus X " was a' he said : 
The neist word that Sir Patrick read, 

'Twas ^^ plus expenses paid." 

66 



FEBRUARY 



The last word that Sir Patrick read, 

The tear blinded his e'e : 
*' The pound I most admire is not 

In Scottish currencie." 

Stately stepped he east the wa', 
And stately stepped he north : 

He fetched a compass frae his ha' 
And stood beside the Forth. 

Then gurly grew the waves o' Forth, 

And gurUer by-and-by — 
" O never yet was sic a storm, 

Yet it isna sic as I ! " 

Syne he has crost the Firth o' Forth 

Until Dunfermline toun ; 
And tho' he came with a kittle wame 

Fu' low he louted doun. 

*'A line, a line, a gude straight line, 

O King, purvey me quick ! 
And see it be of thilka kind 

That's neither braid nor thick." 

** Nor thick nor braid ? " King Jamie said, 

" I '11 eat my gude hat-band 
If arra line as ye define 

Be found in our Scotland." 

"Tho' there be nane in a' thy rule, 

It sail be ruled by me;" 
And lichtly with his little pencil 

He 's ruled the line A B. 



67 



FEBRUARY 



Stately stepped he east the wa', 

And stately stepped he west ; 
"Ye touch the button," Sir Patrick said, 

"And I sail do the rest." 

And he has set his compass foot 

Untill the centre A, 
From A to B he's stretched it oot — 

" Ye Scottish carles, give way ! " 

Syne he has moved his compass foot 

Untill the centre B, 
From B to A he's stretched it oot, 

And drawn it viz-a-vee. 

The tane circle was BCD, 

And A C E the tither : 
"I rede ye well," Sir Patrick said, 

" They interseck ilk ither. 

" See here, and where they interseck— 

To wit with yon point C — 
Ye '11 just obsairve that I conneck 

The twa points A and B. 

"And there ye have a little triangle 

As bonny as e'er was seen ; 
The whilk is not isosceles. 

Nor yet it is scalene." 

*' The proof ! the proof ! " King Jamie cried : 

" The how and eke the why ! " 
Sir Patrick laughed within his beard — 
*' 'Tis ex hypothesi — 

68 



FEBRUARY 



" When I ligg'd in my mither's wame, 

I learn'd it frae my mither, 
That things was equal to the same, 

Was equal ane to t'ither. 

" Siih in the circle first I drew 

The lines B A, B C, 
Be radii true, I wit to you 

The baith maun equal be. 

*' Likewise and in the second circle, 

Whilk I drew widdershins, 
It is nae skaith the radii baith, 

A B, AC, be twins. 

"And sith of three a pair agree 

That ilk suld equal ane, 
By certes they maun equal be 

Ilk unto ilk by-lane." 

"Now by my faith ! " King Jamie saith, 

" What plane geometrie ! 
If only Potts had written in Scots, 

How loocid Potts wad be ! " 

"Now wow's my life ! " said Jamie the King, 
And the Scots lords said the same, 

For but it was that envious knicht, 
Sir Hughie o' the Graeme. 

" Flim-flam, flim-flam ! " and '* Ho indeed ?" 

Quod Hughie o' the Graeme ; 
" 'Tis I could better upon my heid 

This prabblin prablem-game.'^ 



FEBRUARY 



Sir Patrick Spens was nothing laith 
When as he heard "flim-flam," 

But syne he's ta'en a silken claith 
And wiped his diagram. 

** Gif my small feat may better'd be, 

Sir Hew, by thy big head, 
What I hae done with an A B C 

Do thou with X Y Z." 

Then sairly sairly swore Sir Hew, 

And loudly laucht the King ; 
But Sir Patrick tuk the pipes and blew, 

And played that eldritch thing! 

He's play'd it reel, he's play'd it jig, 

And the baith alternative ; 
And he 's danced Sir Hew to the Asses' Brigg, 

That's Proposetion Five. 

And there they've met, and there they've fet, 

Forenenst the Asses' Brigg, 
And waefu', waefu' was the fate 

That gar'd them there to ligg. 

For there Sir Patrick's slain Sir Hew, 
And Sir Hew Sir Patrick Spens — 

Now was not that a fine to-do 
For EucHd's Elemen's ? 

But let us sing Long live the King ! 

And his foes the Deil attend 'em : 
For he has gotten his little triangle, 

Quod erat faciendum I 



\4[arcli 



How quietly its best things steal upon the world! 
And in a world where a single line of Sappho's 
survives as a something more important than the 
entire political history of Lesbos, how little will 
the daily newspaper help us to take long views! 

Whether England could better afford to lose 
Shakespeare or her Indian Empire is no fair 
question to put to an Englishman. But every 
Englishman knows in his heart which of these 
two glories of his birth and state will survive the 
other, and by which of them his country will 
earn in the end the greater honour. Though in 
our daily life we — perhaps wisely — make a practice 
of forgetting it, our literature is going to be our 
most perdurable claim on man's remembrance, 
for it is occupied with ideas which outlast all 
phenomena. 

The other day Mr. Bertram Dobell, the famous 
bookseller of Charing Cross Road, rediscovered 
(we might almost say that he discovered) a poet. 
Mr. Dobell has in the course of his life laid the 



71 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Republic of Letters under many obligations. To 
begin with, he loves his trade and honours the 
wares in which he deals, and so continues the good 
tradition that should knit writers, printers, vendors 
and purchasers of books together as partakers of an 
excellent mystery. He studies — and on occasion 
will fight for — the whims as well as the convenience 
of his customers. It was he who took arms against 
the Westminster City Council in defence of the 
out-of-door-stall, the " classic sixpenny box," and 
at least brought off a drawn battle. He is at 
pains to make his secondhand catalogues better 
reading than half the new books printed, and they 
cost us nothing. He has done, also, his pious 
share of service to good literature. He has edited 
James Thomson, him of The City of Dreadful Night, 
He has helped us to learn more than we knew of 
Charles Lamb. He has even written poems of his 
own and printed them under the title of Rosemary 
and Pansies, in a volume marked "Not for sale" — a 
warning which I, as one of the fortunate endowed, 
intend strictly to observe. On top of this he has 
discovered, or rediscovered, Thomas Traherne. 

Now before we contemplate the magnitude of the 
discovery let us rehearse the few facts known of 
the inconspicuous life of Thomas Traherne. He was 
born about the year 1636, the son of a Hereford 
shoemaker, and came in all probability (like Herbert 

72 



MARCH 



and Vaughan) of Welsh stock. In 1652 he entered 
Brasenose College, Oxford, as a commoner. On 
leaving the University he took orders ; was admitted 
Rector of Credenhill, in Herefordshire, in 1657 ; 
took the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1669; 
became the private chaplain of Sir Orlando 
Bridgman, at Teddington ; and died there a few 
months after his patron, in 1674, aged but thirty- 
eight. He wrote a polemical tract on Roman 
Forgeries, which had some success; a treatise on 
Christian ^thicks, which, being full of gentle wisdom, 
was utterly neglected ; an exquisite work, Centuries 
of Meditations, never published ; and certain poems, 
which also he left in manuscript. And there the 
record ends. 

Next let us tell by how strange a chance this 
forgotten author came to his own. In 1896 or 
1897 Mr. William T. Brooke picked up two volumes 
of MS. on a street bookstall, and bought them for 
a few pence. Mr. Brooke happened to be a man 
learned in sacred poetry and hymnology, and he 
no sooner began to examine his purchase than 
he knew that he had happened on a treasure. At 
the same time he could hardly believe that writings 
so admirable were the work of an unknown author. 
In choice of subject, in sentiment, in style, they 
bore a strong likeness to the poems of Henry 
Vaughan the Silurist, and he concluded that they 

73 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



must be assigned to Vaughan. He communicated 
his discovery to the late Dr. Grosart, who became 
so deeply interested in it that he purchased the 
manuscripts and set about preparing an edition of 
Vaughan, in which the newly-found treasures were 
to be included. Dr. Grosart, one may say in 
passing, was by no means a safe judge of charac- 
teristics in poetry. With all his learning and 
enthusiasm you could not trust him, having read 
a poem with which he was unacquainted or which 
perchance he had forgotten, to assign it to its true 
or even its probable author. But when you hear that 
so learned a man as Dr. Grosart considered these 
writings worthy of Vaughan, you may be the less apt 
to think me extravagant in holding that man to have 
been Vaughan's peer who wrote the following lines : — 

" How like an Angel came I down ! 

How bright are all things here ! 
When first among His works I did appear 

O how their Glory me did crown ! 
The world resembled His Eternity, 

In which my soul did walk ; 
And everything that I did see 

Did with me talk. 

*' The streets were paved with golden stones, 
The boys and girls were mine, 
O how did all their lovely faces shine! 
The sons of men were holy ones ; 

74 



In joy and beauty they appeared to me : 
And everything which here I found, 

While Uke an angel I did see, 
Adorned the ground. 



** Proprieties " — 
That is to say, " properties," " estates " — 

" Proprieties themselves were mine, 

And hedges ornaments, 
Walls, boxes, co£fers, and their rich contents 

Did not divide my joys, but all combine. 
Clothes, ribbons, jewels, laces, I esteemed 

My joys by others worn ; 
For me they all to wear them seemed 

When I was born." 

Dr. Grosart then set about preparing a new and 
elaborate edition of Vaughan, which, only just 
before his death, he was endeavouring to find means 
to publish. After his death the two manuscripts 
passed by purchase to Mr. Charles Higham, the 
well-known bookseller of Farringdon Street, who 
in turn sold them to Mr. Dobell. Later, when 
a part of Dr. Grosart's library was sold at Sotheby's, 
Mr. Dobell bought — and this is perhaps the strangest 
part of the story — a third manuscript volume, which 
Dr. Grosart had possessed all the time without an 
inkling that it bore upon Mr. Brooke's discovery. 

lb 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



"though nothing is needed but to compare it v/ith 
the other volumes in order to see that all these 
are in the same handwriting." 

Mr. Dobell examined the writings, compared them 
with Vaughan's, and began to have his doubts. 
Soon he felt convinced that Vaughan was not their 
author. Yet, if not Vaughan, who could the author 
be? 

Again Mr. Brooke proved helpful. To a volume 
of Giles Fletcher's, Chrisfs Victory and Triumpii, 
which he had edited, Mr. Brooke had appended 
a number of seventeenth- century poems not pre- 
viously collected ; and to one of these, entitled " The 
Ways of Wisdom," he drew Mr. Dobell's attention 
as he had previously drawn Mr. Grosart's. To 
Mr. Dobell the resemblance between it and the 
manuscript poems was at once evident. Mr. Brooke 
had found the poem in a little book in the British 
Museum entitled, A Serious and Paiheticall Contem- 
plation of the Mercies of God, in several most Devout 
and Sublime Thanksgivings for the same (a publisher's 
title it is likely) : and this book contained other pieces 
in verse. These having been copied out by Mr. 
Dobell's request, he examined them and felt no 
doubt at all that the author of the manuscript poem 
and of the Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings must 
be one and the same person. But, again, who could 
he be ? 



76 



MARCH 



A sentence in an address "To the Reader" 
prefixed to the Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings 
provided the clue. The editor of this work (a 
posthumous pubHcation), after eulogising the un- 
named author's many virtues wound up with a 
casual clue to his identity: — 

" But being removed out of the Country to the service 
of the late Lord Keeper Bridgman as his Chaplain, he 
died young and got early to those blissful mansions to 
which he at all times aspir'd." 

But for this sentence, dropped at haphazard, the 
secret might never have been resolved. As it was, the 
clue — that the author of Devout and Sublime Thanks- 
givings was private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman 
— had only to be followed up ; and it led to the 
name of Thomas Traherne. This information was 
obtained from Wood's Athene^ Oxonienses, which 
mentioned Traherne as the author of two books, 
Roman Forgeries and Christian Ethicks. 

The next step was to get hold of these two works 
and examine them, if perchance some evidence 
might be found that Traherne was also the author 
of the manuscripts, which as yet remained a 
guess, standing on Mr. Dobell's conviction that 
the verses in the manuscripts and those in Devout 
and Sublime Thanksgivings must be by the same 
hand. 

77 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



By great good fortune that evidence was found 
in Christian Ethicks, in a poem which, with some 
variations, occurred too in the manuscript Centuries^ 
of Meditations, Here then at last was proof positive, 
or as positive as needs be. 



The most of us writers hope and stake for a 
diuturnity of fame; and some of us get it. Sed 
ubi sunt vestimenta eonim qui post vota nuncupata 
perierunt? "That bay leaves were found green in 
the tomb of St. Humbert after a hundred and fifty 
years was looked upon as miraculous," writes Sir 
Thomas Browne. But Traherne's laurel has lain 
green in the dust for close on two hundred and 
thirty years, and his fame so cunningly buried that 
only by half a dozen accidents leading up to a 
chance sentence in a dark preface to a forgotten 
book has it come to light. 

I wonder if his gentle shade takes any satisfaction 
in the discovery ? His was by choice a vita fallens. 
Early in life he made, as we learn from a passage in 
Centuries of Meditations, his election between worldly 
prosperity and the life of the Spirit, between the 
chase of fleeting phenomena and rest upon the 
soul's centre : — 

"When I came into the country and, being seated 
among silent trees and woods and hills, had all my time 

78 



MARCH 



in my own hands, I resolved to spend it all, whatever it 
cost me, in the search of Happiness, and to satiate the 
burning thirst which Nature had enkindled in me from 
my youth ; in which I was so resolute that I chose rather 
to live upon ten pounds a year, and to go in leather 
clothes, and to feed upon bread and water, so that I 
might have all my time clearly to myself, than to keep 
many thousands per annum in an estate of life where my 
time would be devoured in care and labour. And God 
was so pleased to accept of that desire that from that 
time to this I have had all things plentifully provided for 
me without any care at all, my very study of Felicity 
making me more to prosper than all the care in the whole 
world. So that through His blessing I live a free and 
kingly life, as if the world were turned again into Eden, 
or, much more, as it is at this day," 

Yet Traherne is no quietist : a fervent, passionate 
lover, rather, of simple and holy things. He sees 
v^ith the eyes of a child: the whole world shines 
for him " apparell'd in celestial light," and that 
light, he is well aware, shines out on it, through 
the eyes which observe it, from the divine soul of 
man. The verses which I quoted above strike a 
note to which he recurs again and again. Listen 
to the exquisite prose in which he recounts the 
*'pure and virgin apprehension" of his childhood: — 

" The corn was orient and immortal wheat which 
never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought 
it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust 

79 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



and stones of the street were as precious as gold ; the 
gates were at first the end of the world. The green 
trees when I saw them first through one of the gates 
transported and ravished me ; their sweetness and unusual 
beauty made my heart to leap and almost mad with 
ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. 
The Men ! O what venerable and reverend creatures 
did the aged seem ! Immortal Cherubim ! And young 
men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids strange 
seraphic pieces of life and beauty ! Boys and girls 
tumbling in the street were moving jewels ; I knew not 
that they were born, or should die. . . . The streets 
were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, 
their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as 
their sparkling eyes, fair skins, and ruddy faces. The 
skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and 
stars, and all the world was mine ; and I the only spec- 
tator and enjoyer of it. . . ." 

All these things he enjoyed, his life through, un- 
cursed by the itch for " proprietorship " : he was 
like the Magnanimous Man in his own Christian 
Ethicks — *'one that scorns the smutty way of 
enjoying things like a slave, because he delights 
in the celestial way and the Image of God.'* 
In this creed of his all things are made for 
man, if only man will inherit them wisely : even 
God, in conferring benefits on man, is moved 
and rewarded by the felicity of witnessing man's 
grateful delight in them : — 

80 



MARCH 



" For God enjoyed is all His end, 
Himself He then doth comprehend 
When He is blessed, magnified, 
Extoll'd, exalted, prais'd, and glorified." 

Yes, and "undeified almost, if once denied." A 
startling creed, this ; but what a bold and great- 
hearted one ! To Traherne the Soul is a sea which 
not only receives the rivers of God's bliss but "all 
it doth receive returns again." It is the Beloved 
of the old song, "Quia Amore Langueo;" whom 
God pursues, as a lover. It is the crown of all 
things. So in one of his loveliest poems he shows 
it standing on the threshold to hear news of a 
great guest, never dreaming that itself is that 
great guest all the while — 

ON NEWS 

I. 

News from a foreign country came, 

As if my treasure and my wealth lay there : 
So much it did my heart enflame, 

'Twas wont to call my soul into mine ear, 
Which thither went to meet 
The approaching sweet, 
And on the threshold stood 
To entertain the unknown Good. 
It hover'd there 
As if 'twould leave mine ear, 

8i 
7 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



And was so eager to embrace 

The joyful tidings as they came, 
'T would almost leave its dwelling-place 

To entertain that same. 

II. 
As if the tidings were the things, 

My very joys themselves, my foreign treasure, 
Or else did bear them on their wings — 

With so much joy they came, with so much pleasure-— 
My Soul stood at that gate 
To recreate 
Itself with bliss, and to 
Be pleased with speed. A fuller view 
It fain would take, 
Yet journeys back again would make 
Unto my heart : as if 'twould fain 
Go out to meet, yet stay within 
To fit a place to entertain 
And bring the tidings in. 

III. 
What sacred instinct did inspire 

My Soul in childhood with a hope so strong ? 
W^hat secret force moved my desire 

To expect my joy, beyond the seas, so young ? 
Felicity I knew 
Was out of view ; 
And being here alone, 
I saw that happiness was gone 
From me ! For this 
I thirsted absent bHss, 

82 



MARCH 



And thought that sure beyond the seas, 
Or else in something near at hand 

I knew not yet (since nought did please 
I knew), my bliss did stand. 

IV. 

But little did the infant dream 

That all the treasures of the world were by : 
And that himself was so the cream 

And crown of all which round about did lie. 
Yet thus it was : The Gem, 
The Diadem, 
The Ring enclosing all 
That stood upon this earthly ball ; 
The Heavenly Eye, 
Much wider than the sky, 
Wherein they all included were, 

The glorious Soul that was the King 
Made to possess them, did appear 
A small and little thing. 

I must quote from another poem, if only for the 
pleasure of writing down the lines : — 

THE SALUTATION. 

These little limbs. 
These eyes and hands which here I find, 
These rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins— 

Where have ye been ? behind 
What curtain were ye from me hid so long? 
Where was, in what abyss, my speaking tongue? 

83 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



When silent I 
So many thousand, thousand years 
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie, 

How could I smiles or tears 
Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive? 
Welcome ye treasures which I now receive! 
*•}(■■}{. ^ 

These poems waited for two hundred and thirty 
years to be discovered on a street bookstall ! There 
are lines in them and whole passages in the un- 
published Centuries of Meditations which almost set 
one wondering with Sir Thomas Browne "whether 
the best of men be known, or whether there be not 
more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand 
remembered in the known account of Time ? " 
* * ^i * 

I am tempted, but will not be drawn to discuss 
how Traherne stands related to Vaughan on the 
one hand and Cowley on the other. I note the 
discovery here, and content myself with wondering 
if the reader share any of my pleasure in it and 
enjoyment of the process which brought it to pass. 
For me, I was born and bred a bookman. In my 
father's house the talk might run on divinity, 
politics, the theatre; but literature was the great 
thing. Other callings might do well enough, but 
writers were a class apart, and to be a great writer 
was the choicest of ambitions. I grew up in this 
habit of mind, and have not entirely outgrown it 

84 



MARCH 



yet; have not so far outgrown it but that hterary 
discussions, problems, discoveries engage me though 
they He remote from Hterature's service to man (v^ho 
has but a short while to live, and labour and vanity 
if he outlast it). I could join in a hunt after 
Bunyan's grandmothers, and have actually spent 
working days in trying to discover the historical 
facts of v/hich Robinson Crusoe may be an allegory. 
One half of my quarrel with those who try to prove 
that Bacon wrote Shakespeare rests on resentment 
of the time they force me to waste; and a new 
searcher for the secret of the Sonnets has only to 
whistle and I come to him — though, to be sure, that 
gentleman almost cured me who identified the Dark 
Lady with Ann Hathaway, resting his case upon — 

SONNET CCXVIII. 
Whoever hath my wit, thou hast thy Will : 
And where is Will alive but hath a way? 
So in device thy wit is starved still 
And as devised by Will. That is to say, 
My second-best best bed, yea, and the gear withal 
Thou hast ; but all that capital messuage 
Known as New Place goes to Susanna Hall. 
Haply the disproportion may engage 
The harmless all-too-wise which otherwise 
Might knot themselves disknitting of a clue 
That Bacon wrote me. Lastly, I devise 
My wit, to whom ? To wit, to-whit, to-whoo ! 
And here revoke all previous testaments: 
Witness, J. Shaw and Robert Whattcoat, Gents. 



85 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



After this confession you will pardon any small 
complacency that may happen to betray itself in 
the ensuing narrative. 

Mr. Dobell followed up his discovery of Traherne 
by announcing another trouvaille, and one which 
excited me not a little : — 

" Looking recently over a parcel of pamphlets which 
I had purchased, I came upon some loose leaves which 
were headed A Prospect of Society. The title struck me as 
familiar, and I had only to read a few lines to recognise 
them as belonging to [Goldsmith's] The Traveller, But the 
opening lines of my fragment are not the opening lines 
of the poem as it was published ; in fact, the first two 
lines of A Prospect of Society are lines 353-4 in the first 
edition of The Traveller. ... A further examination of 
the fragment which I had discovered showed that it is 
not what is usually understood as a 'proof of The 
Traveller y but rather the material, as yet formless 
and unarranged, out of which it was to be finally 
evolved." 

Now — line for corresponding line — the text dis- 
covered by Mr. Dobell often differs, and sohietimes 
considerably, from that of the first edition of The 
Traveller, and these variations are highly interest- 
ing, and make Mr. Dobell's "find" a valuable one. 
But on studying the newly discovered version I 
very soon found myself differing from Mr. Dobell's 
opinion that we had here the formless, unarranged 

86 . 



MARCH 



material out of which Goldsmith built an exquisitely 
articulated poem.* And, doubting this, I had to 
doubt what Mr. Dobell deduced from it — that "it 
was in the manner in which a poem, remarkable 
for excellence of form and unity of design, was 
created out of a number of verses which were at first 
crudely conceived and loosely connected that Gold- 
smith's genius was most triumphantly displayed." 
For scarcely had I lit a pipe and fallen to work on 
A Prospect of Society before it became evident to 
me (i) that the lines were not " unarranged," but 
disarranged ; and (2) that whatever the reason of this 
disarray, Goldsmith's brain was not responsible ; 
that the disorder was too insane to be accepted either 
as an order in which he could have written the poem, 
or as one in which he could have wittingly allowed 
it to circulate among his friends, unless he desired 
them to believe him mad. Take, for instance, this 
collocation : — 

" Heavens ! how unlike their Belgic sires of old ! 
Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold ; 
Where shading elms beside the margin grew, 
And freshen'd from the waves the zephyr blew." 

Or this:— 

*' To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign, 
We turn, where France displays her bright domain. 

* Early editions of Goldsmith's poem bore the title, The Traveller; 
or, A Prospect of Society. Later editions dropped the sub-title. 

87 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Thou sprightly land of mirth and social ease, 
Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please^ 
How often have I led thy sportive choir 
With tuneless pipe, along the sliding Loire ? 
No vernal bloom their torpid rocks display, 
But Winter lingering chills the lap of May; 
No zephyr fondly sooths the mountain's breast, 
But meteors glare and frowning storms invest." 

Short of lunacy, no intellectual process would 
account for that sort of thing, whereas a poem more 
pellucidly logical than The Traveller does not exist in 
English. So, having lit another pipe, I took a pencil 
and began some simple counting, with this result : — 

The first 42 lines of The Prospect correspond 
with lines 353-400 of The Traveller. 

The next 42 with lines 311-352. 

The next 34 with lines 277-310. 

The next 36 with lines 241-276. 

The next 36 with lines 205-240. 

The next 36 with lines 169-204. 

The next 38 with lines 131-168. 

The next 28 with lines 103-130. 

And the remaining fragment of 18 lines with 
lines 73-92. 

In other words. The Prospect is merely an early draft 
of The Traveller printed backwards in fairly regular 
sections. 

88 



But how can this have happened ? The explana- 
tion is at once simple and ridiculous. As Goldsmith 
finished writing out each page of his poem for press, 
he laid it aside on top of the pages preceding ; and, 
when all was done, he forgot to sort back his pages 
in reverse order. That is all. Given a good stolid 
compositor with no thought beyond doing his duty 
with the manuscript as it reached him, you have 
what Mr. Dobell has recovered — an immortal poem 
printed wrong-end-foremost page by page. I call 
the result delightful, and (when you come to think 
of it) the blunder just so natural to Goldsmith as to 
be almost postulable. 

Upon this simple explanation we have to abandon 
the hypothesis that Goldsmith patiently built a fine 
poem out of a congeries of fine passages pitchforked 
together at haphazard — a splendid rubbish heap: 
and Mr. Dobell's find is seen to be an imperfect 
set of duplicate proofs — fellow, no doubt, to that 
set which Goldsmith, mildly objurgating his own 
or the printer's carelessness, sliced up with the 
scissors and rearranged before submitting it to 
Johnson's friendly revision. 



The pleasantest part of the story (for me) has yet to 
come. We all know how easy it is to turn obstinate 
and defend a pet theory with acrimony. Mr. Dobell 



89 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



did nothing of the sort. Although his enthusiasm 
had committed him to no httle expense in pubhshing 
The Prospect, with a preface elaborating his theory, 
he did a thing which was worth a hundred dis- 
coveries. He sat down, convinced himself that my 
explanation was the right one, and promptly com- 
mitted himself to further expense in bringing out a 
new edition with the friendliest acknowledgment. 
So do men behave who are at once generous of 
temper and anxious for the truth. 

He himself had been close upon the explanation. In 
his preface he had actually guessed that the ''author's 
manuscript, written on loose leaves, had fallen into 
confusion and was then printed Vv'ithout any attempt 
at rearrangement." In fact, he had hit upon the 
right solution, and only failed to follow up the 
clue. 

His find, too, remains a valuable one ; for so far 
as it goes we can collate it with the first edition of 
The Traveller, and exactly discover the emendations 
made by Johnson, or by Goldsmith after discussion 
with Johnson. Boswell tells us that the Doctor " in 
the year 1783, at my request, marked with a pencil 
the lines which he had furnished, which are only 
hne 420, 'To stop too faithful, and too faint to go,' 
and the concluding ten lines, except the last couplet 
but one. . . . He added, ' These are all of which 
I can be sure.' " We cannot test his claim to the 



90 



MAKCH 



concluding lines, for the correspondent passage is 
missing from Mr. Dobell's fragment ; but Johnson's 
word would be good enough without the internal 
evidence of the verses to back it. "To stop too 
faithful, and too faint to go," is his improvement, 
and an undeniable one, upon Goldsmith's " And 
faintly fainter, fainter seems to go." I have not 
been at pains to examine all the revised lines, but 
they are numerous, and generally (to my thinking) 
betray Johnson's hand. Also they are almost con- 
sistently improvements. There is one alteration, 
however, — unmistakably due to Johnson, — which 
some of us will join with Mr. Dobell in regretting. 
Johnson, as a fine, full-blooded Jingo, naturally 
showed some restiveness at the lines — 

*' Yes, my lov'd brother, cursed be that hour 
When first ambition toil'd for foreign power," 

and induced Goldsmith to substitute — 

" Yes, brother, curse Vv-ith me that baleful hour 
When first ambition struck at regal power," 

which may or may not be more creditable in senti- 
ment, but is certainly quite irrelevant in its context, 
which happens to be a denunciation of the greed for 
gold and foreign conquest. It is, in that context, 
all but meaningless, and must have irritated and 

91 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



puzzled many readers of a poem otherwise clearly 
and continuously argued. In future editions of The 
Traveller, Goldsmith's original couplet should be 
restored; and I urge this (let the Tory reader be 
assured) not from any ill-will towards our old friend 
the Divine Right of Kings, but solely in the sacred 
name of Logic. 



Such be the bookman's trivial adventures and 
discoveries. They would be worse than trivial 
indeed if they led him to forget or ignore that by 
which Goldsmith earned his immortality, or to 
regard Traherne merely as a freak in the history 
of literary reputations, and not primarily as the 
writer of such words as these — 

"A little touch of something like pride is seated 
in the true sense of a man's own greatness, without 
which his humility and modesty would be contemptible 

virtues." 

" It is a vain and insipid thing to suffer without 
loving God or man. Love is a transcendent excellence 
in every duty, and must of necessity enter into the 
nature of every grace and virtue. That which maketh 
the solid benefit of patience unknown, its taste so 
bitter and comfortless to men, is its death in the 
separation and absence of its soul. We suffer but 
love not." 

92 



MARCH 



"All things do first receive that give: 

Only 'tis God above 
That from and in Himself doth live; 

Whose all-sufficient love 
Without original can flow, 
And all the joys and glories show 
Which mortal man can take delight to know. 
He is the primitive, eternal Spring, 
The endless Ocean of each glorious thing. 

The soul a vessel is, 
A spacious bosom, to contain 

All the fair treasures of His bliss. 
Which run like rivers from, into, the main, 
And all it doth receive, return again." 

"You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself 
floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the 
heavens and crowned with the stars." 



93 



^prll 



" Thus, then, live I 

Till 'mid all the gloom 

By Heaven ! the bold sun 

Is with me in the room 

Shining, shining! 

«* Then the clouds part, 

Swallows soaring between; 
The spring is alive 

And the meadows are green ! 

«• I jump up like mad, 

Break the old pipe in twain, 
And away to the meadows, 
The meadows again ! ' ' 



n^HE poem of FitzGerald's from which these 
■■■ verses come was known, I believe, to very 
few until Mr. E. V. Lucas exhumed it from Half- 
hours with the Worst Authors, and reprinted it in 
that delightful little book The Open Road. I have 
a notion that even FitzGerald's most learned 
executor was but dimly aware of its existence. 
For my part, at this time of the day, I prefer it 
to his Omar Khayyam — perversely, no doubt. In 
the year 1885 or thereabouts Omar, known only to 

94 



a few, was a wonder and a treasure to last one's 

lifetime ; but I confess that since a club took him 

up and feasted his memory with field-marshals 

and other irrelevant persons in the chair, and since 

his fame has become vulgarised not only in Thames- 

side hotels, but over the length and breadth of the 

North American continent, one at least of his 

admirers has suffered a not unnatural revulsion, 

until now he can scarcely endure to -read the 

immortal quatrains. Immortal they are, no doubt, 

and deserve to be by reason of their style — " fame's 

great antiseptic." But their philosophy is thin after 

all, and will not bear discussion. As exercise for a 

grown man's thought, I will back a lyric of Blake's 

or Wordsworth's, or a page of Ibsen's Peer Gynt 

against the whole of it, any day. 

This, however, is parenthetical. I caught hold of 

FitzGerald's verses to express that jollity which 

should be every man's who looks up from much 

reading or writing and knows that Spring has 

come. 

* * * * 

" Solvitur acris hiems grata vice verts et favoni 
Trahuntqtie siccas machince carinas . . ." 

In other words, I look out of the window and 
decide that the day has arrived for launching the 
boat — 



95 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



" This is that happy morn, 
That day, long wished day!" 

and, to my mind, the birthday of the year. Poten- 
tates and capitalists who send down orders to 
Cowes or Southampton that their yachts are to be 
put in commission, and anon arrive to find every- 
thing ready (if they care to examine), from the 
steam capstan to the cook's apron, have little 
notion of the amusement to be found in fitting out 
a small boat, say of five or six tons. I sometimes 
doubt if it be not the very flower, or at least the 
bloom, of the whole pastime. The serious face 
with which we set about it; the solemn procession 
up the river to the creek where she rests, the high 
tide all but lifting her; the silence in which we 
loose the moorings and haul off; the first thrill of 
buoyant water underfoot ; the business of stepping 
the mast ; quiet days of sitting or pottering about 
on deck in the sunny harbour; vessels passing up 
and down, their crews eyeing us critically as the 
rigging grows and the odds and ends — block, tackle 
and purchase — fall into their ordered places; and 
through it all the expectation running of the 
summer to come, and *'blue days at sea" and un- 
familiar anchorages — unfamiliar, but where the boat 
is, home will be — 

*' Such bliss 
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss." 

96 



Homer, who knew what amused men, constantly 
lays stress on this business of fitting out : — 

'* Then at length she (Athene) let drag the swift ship 
to the sea, and stored within it all such tackling as 
decked ships carry. And she moored it at the far end of 
the harbour. ... So they raised the mast of pine tree, 
and set it in the hole of the cross plank, and made it fast 
with forestays, and hauled up the white sails with twisted 
ropes of oxhide." 

And again : 

" First of all they drew the ship down to the deep 
water, and fixed the oars in leathern loops all orderly, 
and spread forth the white sails. And squires, haughty 
of heart, bare for them their arms " — but you '11 observe 
that it was the masters who did the launching, etc., like 
wise men who knew exactly wherein the fun of the 
business consisted. "And they moored her high out in 
the shore water, and themselves disembarked. There 
they supped and waited for evening to come on." 

You suggest, perhaps, that our seafaring is but play : 
and you are right. But in our play we catch a cupful 
of the romance of the real thing. Also we have the 
real thing at our doors to keep us humble. Day by 
day beneath this window the statelier shipping goes 
by ; and our twopenny adventurings and discoveries 
do truly (I believe) keep the greater wonder and 
interest awake in us from day to day — the wonder 

97 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



and interest so memorably expressed in Mr. Bridges's 
poem, A Passer By : — 

" Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, 
Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West, 
That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding, 
Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest ? 
" Ah ! soon when Winter has all our vales opprest, 
When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling, 
Wilt thou glide on the blue Pacific, or rest 

In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling ? 

" I there before thee, in the country so well thou knowest^, 
Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air : 

I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest. 
And anchor queen of the strange shipping there, 

Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare. . . ♦ 



"And yet, O splendid ship, unbailed and nameless, 

I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine 
That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,. 

Thy port assured in a happier land than mine. 
But for ^11 I have given thee, beauty enough is thine. 

As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding. 
From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line 

In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowdin g. "' 

Though in all human probability I shall never 
be the first to burst into a silent sea, I can declare 
quite seriously that I never steer into an unfamiliar 

98 



APRIL 



creek or haven but, as its recesses open, I can 
understand something of the awe of the boat's crew in 
Andrew Marvell's " Bermudas; " yes, and something 
of the exultation of the great Columbus himself ! 



In a later paper I may have to tell of these 
voyages and traffickings. For the while I leave 
the reader to guess how and in what corner of 
the coast I happened on the following pendant to 
Mr. Dobell's trouvaille. 

It may not challenge comparison with Mr. Flinders 
Petrie's work in Egypt or with Mr. Hogarth's Cretan 
explorations ; but I say confidently that, since 
Mr. Pickwick unearthed the famous inscribed stone, 
no more fortunate or astonishing discovery has 
rewarded literary research upon our English soil 
than the two letters which with no small pride 
I give to the world this month. 

Curiously enough, they concern Mr. Pickwick. 

But, perhaps, by way of preface I shall remind 
the reader that the final number of Pickwick was 
issued in November, 1837. The first French version 
— which Mr. Percy Fitzgerald justly calls "a rjude 
adaptation rather than a translation " — appeared in 
1838, and was entitled Le Club de Pickwickistes, 
Roman Comique, traduit librement de V Anglais par 
Mdme, Eugenie Giboyet. With equal justice Mr. 

99 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Fitzgerald complains {The History of Pickwick^ 
p. 276) that " the most fantastic tricks are played 
with the text, most of the dialogue being left out 
and the whole compressed into two small volumes." 
Yet, in fact, Mme. Giboyet (as will appear) was 
more sinned against than sinning. Clearly she 
undertook to translate the immortal novel in collab- 
oration with a M. Alexandre D , and was driven 

by the author's disapproval to suppress M. D 's 

share of the work. The dates are sufficient evidence 
that this was done (as it no doubt had to be done) in 
haste. I regret that my researches have yielded no 
further information respecting this M. Alexandre 

D . The threat in the second letter may or may 

not have been carried out. I am inclined to hope 
that it was, feeling sure that the result, if ever 
discovered, will prove in the highest degree enter- 
taining. With this I may leave the letters to speak 
for themselves. 

(I) 

"45 Doughty Street, 

" September 2^th, 1837. 

" My dear Madam, — It is true that when granting 
the required permission to translate Pickwick into 
J'^rench, I allowed also the license you claimed for 
yourself and your collaborateur- — of adapting rather 



APRIL 

than translating, and of presenting my hero under 
such small disguise as might commend him better to 
a Gallic audience. But I am bound to say that — to 
judge only from the first half of your version, which 
is all that has reached me — you have construed this 
permission more freely than I desired. In fact, the 
parent can hardly recognise his own child. 

" Against your share in the work, Madame, I have 
little to urge, though the damages you represent 
Mrs. Bardell as claiming — 300,000 francs, or ^f 12,000 
of our money — strikes me as excessive. It is rather 
(I take as my guide the difference in the handwriting) 
to your collaborateur that I address, through you, my 
remonstrances. 

^' I have no radical objection to his making 
Messrs. Snodgrass, Winkle, and Tupman members 
of His Majesty King Louis XIII.'s corps of 
Musketeers, if he is sincerely of opinion that French 
taste will applaud the departure. I even commend 
his slight idealisation of Snodgrass (which, by the 
way, is not the name of an English mountain), and 
the amorousness of Tupman (Aramis) gains — I 
candidly admit — from the touch of religiosity which 
he gives to the character ; though I do not, as he 
surmises, in the course of my story, promote Tupman 
to a bishopric. The development — preferable as on 
some points the episcopal garb may b^ considered to 
the green velvet jacket with a tv/o-inch tail worn 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



by him at Madame Chasselion's/^^^ champetre — would 
jar upon our Anglican prejudices. As for Winkle 
(Porthos), the translation nicely hits off his love of 
manly exercises, while resting his pretensions on a 
more solid basis of fact than appears in the original. 
In the incident of the baldric, however, the imposture 
underlying Mr. W.'s green shooting-coat is conveyed 
with sufficient neatness. 

" M. D has been well advised again in break- 
ing up the character of Sam Weller and making 
him, like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once. 
Buckingham (Jingle) and Fenton (a capital rendering 
of the Fat Boy) both please me ; and in expanding 
the episode of the sausage and the trouser-buttons 

M. D has shown delicacy and judgment by 

altering the latter into diamond studs. 

" Alas ! madam, I wish the same could be said 
for his treatment of my female puppets, which not 
only shocks but bewilders me. In her earlier 
appearances Mrs. Bardell (Milady) is a fairly con- 
sistent character ; and why M. D should hazard 

that consistency by identifying her with the middle- 
aged lady at the great White Horse, Ipswich, passes 
my comprehension. I say, madam, that it bewilders 

me; but for M. D 's subsequent development of 

the occurrences at that hostelry I entertain feehngs 
of which mere astonishment is, perhaps, the mildest. 
I can hardly bring myself to discuss this with a 



APRIL 

Jady ; but you will allow me to protest in the very 
strongest terms that Mr. Pickwick made that un- 
fortunate mistake about the sleeping apartment in 
the completest innocence, that in ejaculating 
* ha-hum ' he merely uttered a note of warning, 

and that * ha-hum' is not (as M. D suspects) 

an English word from which certain syllables have 
been discreetly removed ; that in thrusting his head 
through the bed-curtains he was, as I am careful 
to say, ' not actuated by any definite object ' ; and 
that, as a gentleman should, he withdrew at the 
earliest possible moment. His intercepted duel with 
Mr. Peter Magnus (De Wardes) rests, as I fondly 
imagined I had made clear, upon a complete mis- 
understanding. The whole business of the fleur -de- 
lys on Mrs. Bardell's shoulder is a sheer interpolation 
and should be expunged, not only on grounds of 
morality, but because when you reach the actual 
trial, ' Bardell v. Pickwick,' you will find this 
discovery of the defendant's impossible either to 
ignore or to reconcile with the jury's verdict. 
Against the intervention of Richelieu (Mr. Napkins) 

I have nothing to urge. M. D opines that I 

shall in the end deal out poetical justice to Mrs. 
Bardell as Milady. He is right. I have, indeed, 
gone so far as to imprison her ; but I own that her 
execution (as suggested by him) at the hands of 
the Queer Client, with Pickwick and his friends 

103 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



(or, alternatively, Mrs. Cluppins, Mr. Perker, and 
Bob Sawyer) as silent spectators, seems to me almost 
as inconsistant with the spirit of the tale as his other 
proposal to kidnap Mr. Justice Stareleigh in the boot 
of Mr. Weller's coach, and substitute for his lordship 
the Chancery prisoner in an iron mask. I trust, 
madam, that these few suggestions will, without 
setting any appreciable constraint on your fancy, 
enable you to catch something more of the spirit 
of my poor narrative than I have been able to detect 
in some of the chapters submitted ; and I am, with 
every assurance of esteem, 

" Your obliged servant, 

'' Boz. 

" P.S. — The difference between Anjou wine and 
the milk punch about which you inquire does not 
seem to me to necessitate any serious alteration of 

the chapter in question. M. D 's expressed 

intention of making Master Bardell in later life the 
executioner of King Charles I. of England must 
stand over for some future occasion. The present 
work will hardly yield him the required opportunity 
for dragging in King Charles' head." 

(2) 
" Madame, — Puisque M. Boz se mefie des pro- 
positions lui faites sans but quelconque que de 

104 



concilier les gens d'esprit, j'ai I'honneur de voik 
annoncer nettement que je me retire d'une besogne 
aussi rude que malentendue. II dit que j'ai con^u 
son Pickwick tout autrement que lui. Soit ! Je 
I'ecrirai, ce Pickwick, selon mon propre gout. Que 
M. Boz redoute mes Trois Pickwickistes ! Agreez, 
Madame, etc., etc., 

"Alexandre (le Grand)." 



I am told that literary aspirants in these days do 
not read books, or read them only for purposes of 
review-writing. Yet these pages may happen to 
fall in the way of some literary aspirant faint on a 
false scent, yet pursuing ; and to him, before telling 
of another discovery, I will address one earnest word 
of caution. Let him receive it as from an elder 
brother who wishes him well. 

My caution is^Avoid irony as you would the 
plague. 

Years ago I was used to receive this warning (on 
an average) once a week from my old and dear friend 
Sir Wemyss Reid ; and once a week I would set 
myself, assailing his good nature, to cajole him into 
printing some piece of youthful extravagance which 
he well knew — and I knew — and he knew that 
I knew — would infuriate a hundred staid readers of 
The Speaker and oblige him to placate in private a 

105 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



dozen puzzled and indignant correspondents. For 
those were days before the beards had stiffened on 
the chins of some of us who assembled to reform 
politics, art, literature, and the world in general from 

a somewhat frowsy upstairs coffee-room in C 

Street : days of old — 

'' When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek 
And all the world and we seem'd much less cold 
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold. . . . '* 

Well, these cajoleries were not often successful, yet 
often enough to keep the sporting instinct alive and 

active, and a great deal oftener than F 's equally 

disreputable endeavours : it being a tradition with 

the staff that F had sworn by all his gods to get 

in an article which would force the printer to flee the 
country. I need scarcely say that the tradition was 
groundless, but we worked it shamelessly. 

In this way on January gth, 1897 (a year in which 
the Westminster Aquarium was yet standing), and 
shortly after the issue of the New Year's Honours' 
List, the following article appeared in The Speaker, 
The reader will find it quite harmless until he comes 
i:o the sequel. It was entitled — 

NOOKS OF OLD LONDON. 

I. THE V\^ESTMINSTER SCUTORIUM. 

Let me begin by assuring the reader that the West- 
minster Scutorium has absolutely no connection with 

106 



the famous Aquarium across the road. I suppose that 
every Londoner has heard, at least, of the Aquarium, 
but I doubt if one in a hundred has heard of the Httle 
Scutorium which stands removed from it by a stone's 
throw, or less; and I am certain that not one in a 
thousand has ever stooped his head to enter by its 
shy, squat, fifteenth-century doorway. It is a fact that- 
the very policeman at the entrance to Dean's Yard 
did not know its name, and the curator assures me 
that the Post Office has made frequent mistakes in 
delivering his letters. So my warning is not quite 
impertinent. 

But a reader of antiquarian tastes, who cares as little 
as I do for hypnotisers and fasting men, and does not 
mind a trifle of dust, so it be venerable, will not regret 
an hour spent in looking over the Scutorium, or a chat 
with Mr. Melville Robertson, its curator, or Clerk of 
the Ribands (Stemmata) — to give him his official title. 
Mr. Robertson ranks, indeed, with the four pursuivants 
of Heralds' College, from which the Scutorium was 
originally an offshoot. He takes an innocent delight in 
displaying his treasures and admitting you to the stores 
of his unique information ; and I am sure would welcome 
more visitors. 

Students of Constitutional History will remember that 
strange custom, half Roman, half Medieval, in accord- 
ance with which a baron or knight, on creation or 
accession to his title and dignities, deposited in the king's 
keeping a waxen effigy, or mask, of himself,- together 
with a copy of his coat of arms. And it has been argued 
— plausibly enough when we consider the ancestral 
masks of the old Roman families, the respect paid to 

107 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



them by the household, and the important part they 
played on festival days, at funerals, &c. — that this 
offering was a formal recognition of the patria potestas of 
the monarch as father of his people. Few are aware, 
however, that the custom has never been discontinued,, 
and that the cupboards of Westminster contain a waxen 
memorial of almost every man whom the king has 
delighted to honour, from the Conquest down to the very 
latest knight gazetted. The labour of modelling and 
painting these effigies was discontinued as long ago as 
1586; and the masks are no longer likenesses, but oval 
plates of copper, each bearing its name on a label. 
Mr. Robertson informed me that Charles I. made a brief 
attempt to revive the old practice. All the Stuarts, 
indeed, set store on the Scutorium and its functions ; and 
I read in an historical pamphlet, by Mr. J. Saxby Hine,. 
the late curator, that large apartments were allocated to 
the office in Inigo Jones's first designs for Whitehall. 
But its rosy prospects faded with the accession of 
William of Orange. Two years later the custody of the 
shields (from which it obtained its name) was relegated 
to the Heralds' College ; and the Scutorium has now to 
be content with the care of its masks and the perform- 
ance of some not unimportant duties presently to be 
recounted. 

A reference from the Heralds' College sent me in quest 
of Mr. Melville Robertson. But even in Dean's Yard 
I found it no easy matter to run him to earth. The 
poHceman (as I have said) could give me no help. At 
length, well within the fourth doorway on the east side, 
after passing the railings, I spied a modest brass plate 
with the inscription Clerk of the Ribands. Hours 11 to 3- 

108 



APRIL 



The outside of the building has a quite modern look, 
but the architect has spared the portal, and the three 
steps which lead down to the flagged entrance hall seem 
to mark a century apiece. I call it an entrance hall, but 
it is rather a small adytum, spanned by a pointed arch 
carrying the legend Stemmata Qvid Facivnt. The modern 
exterior is, in fact, but a shell. All within dates from 
Henry VI. ; and Mr. Robertson (but this is only a 
theory) would explain the sunken level of the ground- 
floor rooms by the action of earthworms, which have 
gradually lifted the surface of Dean's Yard outside. He 
contends the original level to be that of his office, which 
lies on the right of the adytum. A door on the left 
admits to two rooms occupied by the nomenclator, 
Mr. Pender, and two assistant clerks, who comprise the 
stafl". Straight in front, a staircase leads to the upper 
apartments. 

Mr. Robertson was writing when the clerk ushered me 
in, but at once professed himself at my service. He is 
a gentleman of sixty, or thereabouts, with white hair, a 
complexion of a country squire, and very genial manners. 
For some minutes we discussed the difficulty which had 
brought me to him (a small point in county history), and 
then he anticipated my request for permission to inspect 
his masks. 

" Would you like to see them ? They are really very 
curious, and I often wonder that the public should evince 
so small an interest." 

" You get very few visitors ? " 

" Seldom more than two a day ; a few more when the 
Honours' Lists appear. I thought at first that your 
Tisit might be in connection with the new List, but 

log 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



reflected that it was too early. In a day or two we shall 
be comparatively busy." 

" The Scutorium is concerned then with the Honours' 
Lists ? " 

" A little," replied Mr. Robertson, smiling. " That is 
to say, we make them." Then, observing my evident 
perplexity, he laughed. " Well, perhaps that is too 
strong an expression. I should have said, rather, that 
we fill up the blanks." 

*' I had always understood that the Prime Minister 
drew up the Lists before submittting them to Her 
Majesty." 

*' So he does — with our help. Oh, there is no secrecy 
about it ! " said Mr. Robertson, in a tone almost rallying^ 
" The public is free of all information, only it will not 
inquire. A little curiosity on its part would even save 
much unfortunate misunderstanding." 

" In what way ? " 

" Well, the public reads of rewards (with which, by 
the way, I have nothing to do) conferred on really 
eminent men — Lord Roberts, for instance, or Sir Henry 
Irving, or Sir Joseph Lister. It then goes down the 
List and, finding a number of names of which it has 
never heard, complains that Her Majesty's favour has 
been bestowed on nonentities ; whereas this is really the 
merit of the List, that they are nonentities." 

" I don't understand." 

" Well, then, they dont exist.'' 

" But surely " 

" My dear sir," said Mr. Robertson, still smiling, and 
handing me his copy of The Times, '* cast your eye down 
that column ; take the names of the new knights — 



' Blain, Clarke, Edridge, Farrant, Laing, Laird, Wardle' 
— what strikes you as remarkable about them ? " 

" Why, that I have never heard of any of them." 

" Naturally, for there are no such people. I made 
them up ; and a good average lot they are, though 
perhaps the preponderance of monosyllables is a little 
too obvious." 

*' But see here. I read that ' Mr. Thomas Wardle is 
a silk merchant of Staffordshire.' " 

" But I assure you that I took him out of Pickwick,'^ 

" Yes, but here is * William Laird,' for instance. 1 
hear that already two actual William Lairds — one of 
Birkenhead, the other of Glasgow — are convinced that 
the honour belongs to them." 

"No doubt they vvill be round in a day or two. The 
Heralds' College will refer them to me — not simultane- 
ously, if I may trust Sir Albert Woods's tact — and I 
shall tell them that it belongs to neither, but to another 
William Laird altogether. But, if you doubt, take the 
Indian promotions. Lord Salisbury sometimes adds a 
name or two after I send in the List, and — well, you 
know his lordship is not fond of the dark races and has a 
somewhat caustic humour. Look at the new C.LE.'s : 
* Rai Bahadur Pandit Bhag Rum.' Does it occur to 
you that a person of that name really exists ? ' Khan 
Bahadur Naoraji (' Naoraji,' mark you) Pestonji Vakil ' 
— it's the language of extravaganza ! The Marquis goes 
too far : it spoils all verisimilitude." 

Mr. Robertson grew quite ruffled. 

" Then you pride yourself on verisimilitude ? " I 
suggested. 

"As I think you may guess ; and we spare no pains to 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



attain it, whether in the names or in the descriptions 
supplied to the newspapers. * William Arbuthnot Blain, 
Esq.' — you have heard of Balzac's scouring Paris for 
a name for one of his characters. I assure you I scoured 
England for William Arbuthnot Blain — ' identified with 
the movement for improving the dwellings of the 
labouring classes ' — or is that Richard Farrant, Esq. ? 
In any case, what more likely, on the face of it ? 
• Frederick Wills, Esq., of the well-known tobacco firm 
of Bristol ' — the public swallows that readily : and yet it 
never buys a packet of their Westward Ho ! Mixture 
(which I smoke myself) without reading that the Wills's 
of Bristol are W. D. and H. O. — no Frederick at all." 

" But," I urged, " the purpose of this " 

** I should have thought it obvious ; but let me give you 
the history of it. The practice began with William III, 
He was justly scornful of the lax distribution of honours 
which had marked all the Stuart reigns. You will 
hardly believe it, but before 1688 knighthoods, and even 
peerages, went as often as not to men who qualified by 
an opportune loan to the Exchequer, or even by presiding 
at a public feast. (I say nothing of baronetcies, for their 
history is notorious.) At first William was for making a 
clean sweep of the Honours' List, or limiting it to two 
or three well-approved recipients. But it was argued 
that this seeming niggardliness might injure His Majesty's 
popularity, never quite secure. The Scutorium found a 
way out of the dilemma. Sir Crofton Byng, the then 
Clerk of the Ribands, proposed the scheme, which has 
worked ever since. I may tell you that the undue largesse 
of honours finds in the very highest quarters as little 
iavour as ever it did. Of course, there are some whose 



services to science, literature, and art cannot be ignored — 
the late Lord Leighton, for instance, or Sir George 
.Newnes, or Sir Joseph Lister again ; and these are 
honoured, while the pubHc acclaims. But the rest are 
represented only in my collection of masks — and an 
interesting one it is. Let me lead the way." 

But I have left myself no space for describing the 
treasures of the Scutorium. The two upper stories are 
undoubtedly the least interesting, since they contain the 
modern, unpainted masks. Each mask has its place, its 
label, and on the shelf below it, protected by a slip of 
glass, a description of the imaginary recipient of the 
royal favour. One has only to look along the crowded 
shelves to be convinced that Mr. Melville Robertson's 
office is no sinecure. The first floor is devoted to a small 
working hbrary and a museum (the latter undergoing 
rearrangement at the time of my visit). But the 
-cellars ! — or (as I should say) the crypt ! In Beaumont's 
words — 

" Here 's a world of pomp and state 
Buried in dust, once dead by fate ! " 

Here in their native colours, by the light of Mr. Robert- 
son's duplex lantern, stare the faces of the illustrious 
dead, from Rinaldus FitzTurold, knighted on Senlac 
field, to stout old Crosby Martin, sea-rover, who received 
i;he accolade (we '11 hope he deserved it) from the Virgin 
Queen in 1586. A few even are adorned with side-locks, 
which Mr. Pender, the nomendator, keeps scrupulously 
dusted. In almost every case the wax has withstood the 
tooth of time far better than one could have expected. 
Mr. Robertson believes that the pigments chosen must 

"2 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



have had some preservative virtue. If so, the secret has 
been lost. But Mr. Pender has touched over some of 
the worst decayed with a mixture of copal and pure 
alcohol, by which he hopes at least to arrest the mischief; 
and certainly the masks in the Scutorium compare very 
favourably with the waxen effigies of our royalties 
preserved in the Abbey, close by. Mr. Robertson has a 
theory that these, too, should by rights belong to his 
museum : but that is another story, and a long one. 
Suffice it to say that I took my leave with the feelings of 
one .who has spent a profitable afternoon : and for further 
information concerning this most interesting nook of old 
London I can only refer the reader to the pamphlet 
already alluded to, The WestminsUr Saitorium : Its 
History and Present Uses. By J. Saxby Hine, C.B., 
F.S.A. Theobald & Son, Skewers Alley, Chancery 
Lane, E.G. 



This article appeared to my beloved editor innocent 
enough to pass, and to me (as doubtless to the reader) 
harmless enough in all conscience. Now listen to the 
sequel. 

Long afterwards an acquaintance of mine — a 
barrister with antiquarian tastes — was dining with 
me in my Cornish home, and the talk after dinner 
fell upon the weekly papers and reviews. On The 
Speaker he touched with a reticence which I set 
down at first to dislike for his politics. By and by, 
however, he let shp the word "untrustworthy." 

114 



" Holding your view of its opinions," I suggested, 
" you might fairly say * misleading.' * Untrustworthy ' 
is surely too strong a word." 

" I am not talking," said he, *' of its opinions, 
but of its mis-statements of fact. Some time ago it 
printed an article on a place which it <:alled 'The 
Westminster Scutorium,' and described in detail. 
I happened to pick the paper up at my club and 
read the article. It contained a heap of historical 
information on the forms and ceremonies which 
accompany the granting of titles, and was appar- 
ently the work of a specialist. Being interested 
(as you know) in these matters, and having an 
hour to spare, I took a hansom down to West- 
minster. At the entrance of Dean's Yard I 
found a policeman, and inquired the way to the 
Scutorium. He eyed me for a moment, then he 
said, ' Well, I thought I 'd seen the last of 'em. 
You 're the first to-day, so far ; and yesterday there 
was only five. But Monday — and Tuesday — and 
Wednesday ! There must have been thirty came as 
late as Wednesday ; though by that time I 'd found 
out what was the matter. All Monday they kept 
me hunting round and round the yard, following 
like a pack. Very respectable-looking old gentlemen, 
too, the whole of 'em, else I should have guessed 
they were pulling my leg. Most of 'em had copies 
of a paper. The Speaker, and read out bits from it, 

"5 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



and insisted on my searching in this direction and 
that . . . and me being new to this beat, and seeing 
it all in print ! We called in the postman to help. 
By and by they began to compare notes, and found 
they *d been kidded, and some of 'em used language. 
... I really think, sir, you must be the last of 



ii6 



M^y 



1WAS travelling some weeks ago by a railway 
line alongside of which ran a quickset hedge. 
It climbed to the summit of cuttings, plunged to 
the base of embankments, looped itself around 
stations, flickered on the skyline above us, raced 
us along the levels, dipped into pools, shot up again 
on their farther banks, chivvied us into tunnels, 
ran round and waited for us as we emerged. Its 
importunity drove me to the other side of the 
carriage, only to find another quickset hedge behaving 
similarly. Now I can understand that a railway 
company has excellent reasons for planting quickset 
hedges alongside its permanent way. But their 
unspeakable monotony set me thinking. Why do 
we neglect the real parks of England ? — parks 
enormous in extent, and yet uncultivated, save here 
and there and in the most timid fashion. And how 
better could our millionaires use their wealth (since 
they are always confiding to us their difficulties in 
getting rid of it) than by seeking out these gardens 
and endowing them, and so, without pauperising 

117 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



anyone, build for themselves monuments not only 
delightful, but perpetual ? — for, as Victor Hugo said, 
the flowers last always. So, you may say, do books. 
I doubt it; and experts, who have discussed with 
me the modern products of the paper trade, share 
my gloomy views. Anyhow, the free public library 
has been sufficiently exploited, if not worked out. 
So, you may say again, have free public gardens 
and parks been worked out. I think not. Admit 
that a fair percentage of the public avails itself of 
these libraries and parks; still the mass does not, 
and they were intended for the mass. Their attrac- 
tiveness does not spread and go on spreading. The 
stream of public appreciation which pours through 
them is not fathomless ; beyond a certain point it 
does not deepen, or deepens with heart-breaking 
slowness ; and candid librarians and curators can 
sound its shallows accurately enough. What we 
want is not a garden into which folk will find their 
way if they have nothing better to do and can spare 
the time with an effort. Or, to be accurate, we do 
want such gardens for deliberate enjoyment ; but 
what we want more is to catch our busy man and 
build a garden about him in the brief leisure which, 
without seeking it, he is forced to take. 

Where are these gardens ? Why, beside and along 
our railway lines. These are the great public parks 
of England ; and through them travels daily a vast 

ii8 



MAY 

population held in enforced idleness, seeking distrac- 
tion in its morning paper. Have you ever observed 
how a whole carriageful of travellers on the Great 
Western line will drop their papers to gaze out on 
Messrs. Sutton's trial-beds just outside Reading? 
A garish appeal, no doubt : a few raying spokes of 
colour, and the vision has gone. And I forestall the 
question, " Is that the sort of thing you wish to see 
extended ? — a bed of yellow tulips, for instance, or 
of scarlet lobelias, or of bright-blue larkspurs, all 
the way from London to Liverpool ? " I suggest 
nothing of the sort. Our railway lines in England, 
when they follow the valleys — as railway lines 
must in hilly districts — are extraordinarily beauti- 
ful. The eye, for example, could desire nothing 
better, in swift flight, than the views along the Wye 
Valley or in the Derbyshire Peak country, and even the 
rich levels of Somerset have a beauty of their own 
(above all in May and June, when yellow with sheets 
of buttercups) which artificial planting would spoil. 
But — cant about Nature apart — every kne has its 
dreary cuttings and embankments, all of which 
might be made beautiful at no great cost. I need 
not laboiir this : here and there by a casual bunch 
of rhododendrons or of gorse, or by a sheet of 
primroses or wild hyacinths in springtime, the tbiag 
is proved, and has been proved again and again to 
me by the comments of fellow-passengers. 

119 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Now I am honestly enamoured of this dream of 
mine, and must pause to dwell on some of its 
beauties. In the first place, we could start to realise 
it in the most modest fashion and test the apprecia- 
tion of the public as we go along. Our flowers 
would be mainly wild flowers, and our trees, for the 
most part, native British plants, costing, say, from 
thirty shiUings to three pounds the hundred. A few 
roods would do to begin with, if the spot were well 
chosen ; indeed, it would be wiser in every way to 
begin modestly, for though England possesses 
several great artists in landscape gardening, their 
art has never to my knowledge been seriously 
applied to railway gardening, and the speed of the 
spectators introduces a new and highly -amusing 
condition, and one so singular and so important 
as to make this almost a separate art. At any rate, 
our gardeners would have to learn as they go, and 
if any man can be called enviable it is an artist 
learning to express art's eternal principles in a new 
medium, under new conditons. 

Even if we miss our millionaire, we need not 
despond over ways and means. The beauty-spots of 
Great Britain are engaged just now in a fierce rivalry 
of advertisement. Why should not this rivalry be 
pressed into the service of beautifying the railway 
lines along which the tourist must travel to reach 
them ? Why should we neglect the porches (so to 



MAY 

speak) of our temples ? Would not the tourist 
arrive in a better temper if met on his way with 
silent evidence of our desire to please ? And, again,. 
is the advertising tradesman quite wise in offending 
so many eyes with his succession of ugly hoardings 
standing impertinently in green fields ? Can it be 
that the sight of them sets up that disorder of the 
liver which he promises to cure ? And if not, might 
he not call attention to his wares at least as effec- 
tively, if more summarily, by making them the 
excuse for a vision of delight which passengers 
would drop their newspapers to gaze upon ? Lastly^ ^ 
the railway companies themselves have discovered 
the commercial value of scenery. Years ago, and 
long before their discovery (and as if by a kind of 
instinct they were blundering towards it) they began 
to offer prizes for the best-kept station gardens — with 
what happy result all who have travelled in South 
Wales will remember. They should find it easy to 
learn that the "development" of watering-places 
and holiday resorts may be profitably followed up by 
spending care upon their approaches. 

But I come back to my imaginary millionaire — 
the benevolent man who only wants to be instructed 
how to spend his money — the "magnificent man" of 
Aristotle's Ethics, nonplussed for the moment, and 
in despair of discovering an original way of scattering 
largesse for the public good. For, while anxious to 

121 



FKOM A CORNISH WINDOW 



further my scheme by conciliating the commercial 
instinct, I must insist that its true beauty resides in 
the conception of our railways as vast public parks 
only hindered by our sad lack of inventiveness from 
ministering to the daily delight of scores of thousands 
and the occasional delight of almost everyone. The 
millionaire I want is one who can rise to this con- 
ception of it, and say with Blake — 

*' I will not cease from mental fight," 

(nor from pecuniary contribution, for that matter) 

'* Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand 
Till we have built Jerusalem 
In England's green and pleasant land." 

For these millionaires are bediamonded all over with 
good intentions. The mischief with them is their 
lack of inventiveness. Most of my readers will 
agree that there is no easier game of solitaire than 
to suppose yourself suddenly endowed with a million 
of money, and to invent modes of dispensing it for 
the good of your kind. As a past master of that 
game I offer the above suggestion gratis to those 
poor brothers of mine who have more money than 
they know how to use. 



The railway — not that of the quickset hedges, 
but the Great Western, on to which I changed after 



a tramp across Dartmoor — took me to pay a pious 
visit to my old school : a visit which I never pay 
w^ithout thinking — especially in the chapel where we 
used to sing " Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing " 
on the evening before holidays — of a passage in 
Izaak Walton's Life of Sir Henry Wotton : — 

" He yearly went also to Oxford. But the summer 
before his death he changed that for a journey to 
Winchester College, to which school he was first removed 
from Bocton. And as he returned from Winchester 
towards Eton College, said to a friend, his companion in 
that journey, * How useful was that advice of a holy 
monk who persuaded his friend to perform his customary 
devotions in a constant place, because in that place Ave 
usually meet with those very thoughts which possessed 
us at our last being there ! And I find it thus far 
experimentally true that at my now being in that school, 
and seeing the very place where I sat when I was a boy, 
occasioned me to remember those very thoughts of my 
youth which then possessed me : sweet thoughts indeed, 
that promised my growing years numerous pleasures 
without mixtures of cares: and those to be enjoyed 
when time — which I therefore thought slow- paced — 
Jiad changed my youth into manhood. But age and 
experience have taught me that those were but empty 
hopes : for I have always found it true, as my Saviour 
did foretell, " Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." 
Nevertheless, I saw there a succession of boys using the 
same recreations and, questionless, possessed with the 
^ame thoughts that then possessed me. Thus one 

123 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



generation succeeds another, both in their lives, recrea- 
tions, hopes, fears, and death.' " 

But my visit on this occasion was filled with 
thought less of myself than of a poet I had known 
in that chapel, those cloisters, that green close ; not 
intimately enough to call him friend, yet so intimately 
that his lately-departed shade still haunted the place 
for me — a small boy whom he had once, for a day or 
two, treated with splendid kindness and thereafter 
(I dare say) had forgotten. 



"T. E. B." 

Thomas Edward Brown was born on May 5th, 
1830, at Douglas, in the Isle of Man, where his 
father held the living of St. Matthew's. Sixty-five 
years later he wrote his last verses to aid a fund 
raised for a new St. Matthew's Church, and 
characteristically had to excuse himself in a letter 
penetrated with affection for the old plain edifice 
and its memories. 

" I was baptised there ; almost all whom I loved and 
revered were associated with its history . . . 'The 
only church in Douglas where the poor go * — I dare say 
that is literally true. But I believe it will continue to 
be so. ... I postulate the continuity. . . ." 

I quote these words (and so leave them for a 

124 



^hile) with a purpose, aware how trivial they may 
seem to the reader. But to those who had the 
privilege of knowing Brown that cannot be 
trivial which they feel to be characteristic and in 
some degree explicative of the man ; and with this 
** I postulate the continuity " we touch accurately 
and simply for once a note which sang in many 
chords of the most vocal, not to say orchestral, 
nature it has ever been my lot to meet. 

Let me record, and have done with, the few 
necessary incidents of what was by choice a vita 
fallens and "curiously devoid of incident." The 
boy was but two years old when the family removed 
to Kirk Braddan Vicarage, near Douglas; the sixth 
of ten children of a witty and sensible Scots mother 
and a father whose nobly humble idiosyncrasies 
continued in his son and are worthy to live longer 
in his description of them : — 

'*To think of a Pazon respecting men's vices even; 
not as vices, God forbid ! but as parts of them, very 
likely all but inseparable from them ; at any rate, theirs ! 
Pitying with an eternal pity, but not exposing, not 
rebuking. My father would have considered he was 
* taking a liberty ' if he had confronted the sinner with 
his sin. Doubtless be carried this too far. But don't 
suppose for a moment that the ' weak brethren ' thought 
he was conniving at their weakness. Not they: they 
saw the delicacy of his conduct. You don't think, do 
you, that these poor souls are incapable of appreciating 

125 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



delicacy? God only knows how far down into their 
depths of misery the sweetness of that delicacy 
descends. . . . He loved sincerity, truth and modesty. 
It seemed as if he felt that, with these virtues, the 
others could not fail to be present." 

Add to this that the Vicar of Kirk Braddan, though 
of no University, was a scholar in grain ; was, for 
example, so fastidious about composition that he 
would make his son read some fragment of an 
English classic to him before answering an invita- 
tion ! "To my father style was like the instinct 
of personal cleanliness." Again we touch notes 
which echoed through the life of his son — who 
worshipped continuity. 

From a course of tuition divided between his 
father and the parish schoolmaster. Brown went, 
at fifteen or over, to King William's College, and 
became its show scholar; thence, by the efforts of 
well-meaning friends (but at the cost of much 
subsequent pain), to Christ Church, Oxford, as a 
servitor. He won his double first; but he has left 
on record an account of a servitor's position at 
Christ Church in the early fifties, and to Brown 
the spiritual humiliation can have been little less 
than one long dragging anguish. He had, of course, 
his intervals of high spirits ; but (says Mr. Irwin, 
his friend and biographer) "there is no doubt he 
did not exaggerate what the position was to 

126 



MAY 

him. I have heard him refer to it over and over 
again with a dispassionate bitterness there was 
no mistaking." Dean Gaisford absolutely refused 
to nominate him, after his two first classes, to 
a fellowship, though all the resident dons wished 
it. " A servitor never has been ehcted student— 
ergo, he never shall be." Brown admired Gaisford, 
and always spoke kindly of him *' in all his dealings 
with me." Yet the night after he won his double 
first was " one of the most intensely miserable I was 
ever called to endure." Relief, and of the right 
kind, came with his election as Fellow of Oriel in 
April, 1854. In those days an Oriel Fellowship still 
kept and conveyed its peculiar distinction, and the 
brilliant young scholar had at length the ball at 
his feet. 

" This is none of your empty honours," he wrote to 
his mother ; *' it gives me an income of about ^300 per 
annum as long as I choose to reside at Oxford, and 
about ;^220 in cash if I reside elsewhere. In addition 
to this it puts me in a highly commanding position for 
pupils, so that on the whole I have every reason to 
expect that (except perhaps the first year) I shall make 
between ;f 500 and ;^6oo altogether per annum. So you 
see, my dear mother, that your prayers have not been 
unanswered, and that God will bless the generation of 
those who humbly strive to serve Him. ... I have 
not omitted to remark that the election took place on 
April 2Lst, the anniversary of your birth and marriage." 

127 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



How did he use his opportunity ? " He never 
took kindly to the Hfe of an Oxford fellow," 
thought the late Dr. Fowler (an old schoolfellow 
of Brown's, afterwards President of Corpus and 
Vice -Chancellor of the University). Mr. Irwin 
quotes another old friend, Archdeacon Moore, to 
much the same effect. Their explanations lack 
something of definiteness. After a few terms of 
private pupils Brown returned to the Island, and 
there accepted the office of Vice-principal of his 
old school. We can only be sure that his reasons 
were honourable, and sufficed for him ; we may 
include among them, if we choose, that nostalgia 
which haunted him all his days, until fate finally 
granted his wish and sent him back to his beloved 
Argos " for good." 

In the following year (1857) ^^ married his cousin. 
Miss Stowell, daughter of Dr. Stowell, of Ramsay; 
and soon after left King W^illiam's College to become 
"by some strange mischance" Head Master of the 
Crypt School, Gloucester. Of this " Gloucester 
episode," as he called it, nothing needs to be 
recorded except that he hated the whole business 
and, incidentally, that one of his pupils was Mr. 
W. E. Henley — destined to gather into his National 
Observer, rnany years later, many blooms of Brown's 
last and not least memorable efflorescence in poesy. 

From Gloucester he was summoned, on a fortunate 

128 



MAY 

day, by Mr. Percival (now Bishop of Hereford), who 
had recently been appointed to Clifton College, then 
a struggling new foundation, soon to be lifted by him 
into the ranks of the great Public Schools. Mr. 
Percival wanted a man to take the Modern Side ; 
and, as fate orders these things, consulted the friend 
reserved by fate to be his own successor at Clifton 
— Mr. Wilson (now Canon of Worcester). Mr. 
Wilson was an old King William's boy; knew 
Brown, and named him. 

** Mr. Wilson having told me about him," writes the 
bishop, " I made an appointment to see him in Oxford, 
and there, as chance would have it, I met him standing 
at the corner of St. Mary's Entry, in a somewhat 
Johnsonian attitude, four-square, his hands deep in his 
pockets to keep himself still, and looking decidedly 
volcanic. We very soon came to terms, and I left him 
there under promise to come to Clifton as my colleague 
at the beginning of the following Term ; and, needless to 
say, St. Mary's Entry has had an additional interest 
to me ever since. Sometimes I have wondered, and it 
would be worth a good deal to know, what thoughts 
were crossing through that richly-furnished, teeming 
brain as he stood there by St. Mary's Church, with 
Oriel College in front of him, thoughts of his own 
struggles and triumphs, and of all the great souls that 
had passed to and fro over the pavement around him ; 
and all set in the lurid background of the undergraduate 
life to which he had been condemned as a servitor at 
Christ Church." 



129 

10 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Was he happy in his many years' work at 
Clifton ? On the whole, and with some reser- 
vation, we may say *'yes" — "yes," although in 
the end he escaped from it gladly and enjoyed 
his escape. One side of him, no doubt, loathed 
formality and routine ; he was, as he often pro- 
claimed himself, a nature-loving, somewhat intract- 
able Celt; and if one may hint at a fault in 
him, it was that now and then he soon tired, 
A man so spendthrift of emotion is bound at 
times to knock on the bottom of his emotional 
coffers ; and no doubt he was true to a mood when 
he wrote — 

" I *m here at Clifton, grinding at the mill 

My feet for thrice nine barren years have trod, 
But there are rocks and waves at Scarlett still, 
And gorse runs riot in Glen Chass — thank God J 

" Alert, I seek exactitude of rule, 

I step and square my shoulders with the squad, 
But there are blaeberries on old Barrule, 

And Langness has its heather still — thank God !'* 

— with the rest of the rebellious stanzas. We may 
go farther and allow that he played with the mood 
until he sometimes forgot on which side lay serious- 
ness and on which side humour. Still it was a 
mood ; and it was Brown, after all, who wrote 
** Planting " :— • 

130 



" Who would be planted chooseth not the soil 

Or here or there, 

Or loam or peat, 

Wherein he best may grow 
And bring forth guerdon of the planter's toil — 

The lily is most fair, 

But says not ' I will only blow 
Upon a southern land ' ; the cedar makes no coil 

What rock shall owe 

The springs that wash his feet ; 
The crocus cannot arbitrate the foil 

That for his purple radiance is most meet — 

Lord, even so 

I ask one prayer. 

The which if it be granted. 

It skills not where 
Thou plantest me, only I would be planted." 

" You don't care for school-work," he writes to an Old 
Cliftonian. ... "I demur to your statement that when 
you take up schoolmastering your leisure for this kind of 
thing will be practically gone. Not at all. If you have 
the root of the matter in you the school- work will insist 
upon this kind of thing as a relief. My plan always was 
to recognise two lives as necessary — the one the outer 
Kapelistic life of drudgery, the other the inner and 
cherished life of the spirit. It is true that the one has a 
tendency to kill the other, but it must not, and you must 
see that it does not. . . . The pedagogic is needful for 
bread and butter, also for a certain form of joy ; of the 
inner life you know what I think." 

These are wise words, and I believe they represent 
131 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Brown more truly than utterances which only seem 
more genuine because less deliberate. He was as 
a house master excellent, with an excellence not 
achievable by men whose hearts are removed 
from their work ; he awoke and enjoyed fervent 
friendships and the enthusiastic admiration of 
many youngsters ; he must have known of these 
enthusiasms, and was not the man to condemn 
them ; he had the abiding assurance of assisting in 
a kind of success which he certainly respected. He 
longed for the day of emancipation, to return to his 
Island; he was impatient; but I must decline to 
believe he was unhappy. 

Indeed, his presence sufficiently denied it. How 
shall I describe him ? A sturdy, thick-set figure, 
inclining to rotundity, yet athletic; a face extra- 
ordinarily mobile ; bushy, grey eyebrows ; eyes at 
once deeply and radiantly human, yet holding the 
primitive faun in their coverts ; a broad mouth made 
for broad, natural laughter, hearty without lewdness. 
*' There are nice Rabelaisians, and there are nasty ; 
but the latter are not Rabelaisians." " I have an 
idea," he claimed, ''that my judgment within this 
area is infallible." And it was. All honest laughter 
he welcomed as a Godlike function. 

" God sits upon His hill, 
And sees the shadows fly ; 
And if He laughs at fools, why should He not ? " 



132 



And for that matter, why should not we ? Though 
at this, point his fine manners intervened, correcting, 
counselling moderation. " I am certain God made 
fools for us to enjoy, but there must be an economy of 
joy in the presence of a fool ; you must not betray 
your enjoyment." Imagine all this overlaid with 
a certain portliness of bearing, suggestive of the 
high-and-dry Oxford scholar. Add something of 
the parsonic (he was ordained deacon before leaving 
Oxford, but did not proceed to priest's orders till 
near the end of his time at Clifton) ; add a simple 
natural piety which purged the parsonic of all 
** churchiness." 

" This silence and solitude are to me absolute food," 
he writes from the Clifton College Library on the 
morning of Christmas Day, 1875, "especially after all 
the row and worry at the end of Term. . . . Where are 
the men and women ? Well, now look here, you '11 not 
mention it again. They 're all in church. See how good 
God is ! See how He has placed these leitourgic traps 
in which people, especially disagreeable people, get 
caught — and lo! the universe for me ! ! ! me — me. . . ." 

I have mentioned his fine manners, and with a 
certain right, since it once fell to me — a blundering 
innocent in the hands of fate — to put them to 
severest proof. A candidate for a scholarship at 
Clifton — awkward, and abominably conscious of it, 
and sensitive — I had been billeted on Brown's 

133 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



hospitality without his knowledge. The mistake 
(I cannot tell who was responsible) could not be 
covered out of sight ; it was past all aid of kindly 
dissimulation by the time Brown returned to the 
house to find the unwelcome guest bathing in shame 
upon his doorstep. Can I say more than that he 
took me into the family circle — by no means an 
expansive one, or accustomed, as some are, to open 
gleefully to intruders — and for the inside of a week 
treated me with a consideration so quiet and 
pleasant, so easy yet attentive, that his dearest 
friend or most distinguished visitor could not have 
demanded more ? A boy notes these things, and 
remembers. ... " If I lose my manners," Mr. Irwin 
quotes him as saying once over some trivial forget- 
fulness, " what is to become of me ? " He was shy, 
too, like the most of his countrymen — ''jus' the 
shy" — but with a proud reserve as far removed as 
possible from sham humility — being all too sensible 
and far too little of a fool to blink his own eminence 
of mind, though willing on all right occasions to 
forget it. '* Once," records Mr. Irwin, " when I 
remarked on the omission of his name in an article 
on * Minor Poets ' in one of the magazines, he said, 
with a smile, * Perhaps I am among the major ! ' " 
That smile had just sufficient irony — no more. 

To this we may add a passion for music and a 
passion for external nature — external to the most of 

134 



MAY 

US, but so closely knit with his own that to be present 
at his ecstasies was like assisting a high priest of 
elemental mysteries reserved for him and beyond his 
power to impart. And yet we are beating about the 
bush and missing the essential man, for he was 
imprehensible — "Volcanic," the Bishop of Hereford 
calls him, and must go to the Bay of Naples to fetch 
home a simile : 

'* We can find plenty of beauty in the familiar northern 
scenes ; but we miss the pent-up forces, the volcanic 
outbursts, the tropic glow, and all the surprising manifold 
and tender and sweet-scented outpourings of soil and 
sunshine, so spontaneous, so inexhaustibly rich, and with 
the heat of a great fire burning and palpitating under- 
neath all the time." 

Natures more masterfully commanding I have known : 
never one more remarkable. In the mere possession 
of him, rather than in his direct influence, all 
Cliftonians felt themselves rich. We were at least 
as proud of him as Etonians of the author of " lonica." 
But no comparisons will serve. Falstaffian — with a 
bent of homely piety; Johnsonian — with a fiery 
Celtic heat and a passionate adoration of nature : all 
such epithets fail as soon as they are uttered. The 
man was at once absolute and Protean: entirely 
sincere, and yet a different being to each separate 
friend. ** There was no getting to the end of 
Brown." 



135 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



I have said that we — those of us, at any rate, who 
were not of Brown's House — were conscious of a 
rich and honourable possession in him, rather than 
of an active influence. Yet that influence must not 
be underrated. CHfton, as I first knew it, was 
already a great school, although less than twenty 
years old. But, to a new-comer, even more im- 
pressive than its success ^mong schools, or its 
aspirations, was a firmness of tradition which (I dare 
to say) would have been remarkable in a foundation 
of five times its age. It had already its type of boy; 
and having discovered it and how to produce it, fell 
something short of tolerance towards other types. 
For the very reason which allows me with decency 
to call the type an admirable one, I may be excused 
for adding that the tradition demanded some patience 
of those who could not easily manage to conform 
with it. But there the tradition stood, permanently 
rooted in a school not twenty years old. Is it fanciful 
to hold that Brown's passion for "continuity" had 
much to do with planting and confirming it ? 
Mr. Irwin quotes for us a passage from one of his 
sermons to the school: ''Suffer no chasm to interrupt 
this glorious tradition. . . . Continuous life . . . 
that is what we want — to feel the pulses of hearts 
that are now dust," Did this passage occur, I 
wonder, in the sermon of which I rather remember 
a fierce, hopeless, human protest against "change 



136 



and decay " ? — the voice ringing down on each plea, 
*' What do the change-and-decay people say to 
that ? " 

" I postulate the continuity." Vain postulate it 
often seems, yet of all life Brown demanded it. 
Hear him as he speaks of his wife's death in a letter 
to a friend : — 

" My dear fellow-sufferer, what is it after all ? Why 
this sinking of the heart, this fainting, sorrowing of the 
spirit ? There is no separation : life is continuous. All 
that was stable and good, good and therefore stable, in 
our union with the loved one, is unquestionably per- 
manent, will endure for ever. It cannot be otherwise.. 
. . . When love has done its full work, has wrought 
soul into soul so that every fibre has become part of the 
common life — quis separaUt ? Can you conceive yourself 
as existing at all without her ? No, you can't ; well, 
then, it follows that you don't, and never will." 

I believe it to have been this passion for continuity 
that bound and kept him so absolute a Manxman, 
drawing his heart so persistently back to the Island 
that there were times (one may almost fancy) when 
the prospect of living his life out to the end elsew^here 
seemed to him a treachery to his parents' dust. I 
believe this same passion drew him — master as he 
was of varied and vocal English — to clothe the bulk 
of his poetry in the Manx dialect, and thereby ta 
miss his mark with the public, which inevitably^ 

137 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



mistook him for a rustic singer, a man of the people, 
imperfectly educated. 

'* I would not be forgotten in this land" — 

This line of another true poet of curiously similar 
temperament* has haunted me through the reading 
of Brown's published letters. But Brown's was no 
merely selfish craving for continuity — to be remem- 
bered. By a fallacy of thought, perhaps, but by a 
very noble one, he transferred the ambition to those 
for whom he laboured. His own terror that Time 
might obliterate the moment, 

"And all this personal dream be fled," 

became for his countrymen a very spring of helpful- 
ness. Antiquam exquirite matrem — he would do that 
which the}^, in poverty and the stress of earning 
daily bread, were careless to do — would explore for 
them the ancient springs of faith and custom. 

" Dear countrymen, whate'er is left to us 
Of ancient heritage — 
Of manners, speech, of humours, polity, 
The limited horizon of our stage — 
Old love, hope, fear, 
All this I fain would fix upon the page ; 
That so the coming age. 
Lost in the empire's mass, 

* "The Quest of the Sangraal," R. S. Hawker. 

138 



Yet haply longing for their fathers, here 
May see, as in a glass, 
What they held dear — 
May say, ' 'Twas thus and thus 

They lived ' ; and as the time-flood onward rolls 
Secure an anchor for their Keltic souls." 

This was his task, and the public of course set him 
down for a rustic. "What ought I to do?" he 
demands. "Shall I put on my next title-page, 
' Late Fellow of Oriel, etc' ? or am I always to 
abide under this ironic cloak of rusticity?" To be 
sure, on consideration (if the public ever found time 
to consider), the language and feeling of the poems 
were penetrated with scholarship. He entered his 
countrymen's hearts; but he also could, and did, 
stand outside and observe them with affectionate, 
comprehending humour. Scholarship saved him, 
too — not always, but as a rule — from that emotional 
excess to which he knew himself most dangerously 
prone. He assigns it confidently to his Manx blood ; 
but his mother was Scottish by descent, and from 
my experience of what the Lowland Scot can do in 
the way of pathos when he lets himself go, I take 
leave to doubt that the Manxman was wholly to 
blame. There can, however, be no doubt that the 
author of "The Doctor," of ''Catherine Kinrade," 
of *' Mater Dolorosa," described himself accurately 
as a ''born sobber," or that an acquired self- 

139 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



restraint saved him from a form of intemperance 
by which of late our literature has been somewhat 
too copiously afflicted. 

To scholarship, too, imposed upon and pene- 
trating a taste naturally catholic, we owe the rare 
flavour of the many literary judgments scattered 
about his letters. They have a taste of native 
earth, beautifully rarefied : to change the metaphor, 
they illuminate the page with a kind of lambent 
common sense. For a few examples: — 

" I have also read a causerie on Virgil and one on 
Theocritus. So many French litteraUurs give me the 
idea that they don't go nearer the Greek authors than 
the Latin translations. . . . Sainte Beuve [Notiveatix 
Lundis, vii. i — 52, on "The Greek Anthology"] is an 
enthusiastic champion for our side, but, oddly enough, 
he never strikes me as knowing much about the 
matter ! " 

"Your Latin verses [translating Cowley] I greatly 
enjoy. The dear old Abraham goes straight off into 
your beautiful lines. Of course he has not a scrap of 
modern impedimenta. You go through the customs at 
the frontier with a whistle and a smile. You have 
nothing to declare. The blessed old man by your side is 
himself a Roman to begin with, and you pass together 
as cheerfully as possible. . . ." 

" I have also been reading Karl Elze's Essays on 
Shakespeare. He is not bad, but don't you resent the 
imperturbable confidence of men who, after attributing 

140 



a play of Shakespeare's to two authors, proceed to 
suggest a third, urged thereto by some fatuous and self- 
sought exigency ? " 

" Did you ever try to write a Burns song ? I mean 
the equivalent in ordinary English of his Scotch. Can 
it be done ? A Yorkshireman — could he do it ? A 
Lancashire man (Waugh) ? I hardly think so. The 
Ayrshire dialect has a Schwung and a confidence that no 
English county can pretend to. Our dialects are apolo- 
getic things, half-ashamed, half-insolent. Burns has no 
doubts, and for his audience unhesitatingly demands the 
universe. . . ." 

" There is an ^^os in Fitzgerald's letters which is so 
exquisitely idyllic as to be almost heavenly. He takes 
you with him, exactly accommodating his pace to yours, 
walks through meadows so tranquil, and yet abounding 
in the most delicate surprises. And these surprises seem 
so familiar, just as if they had originated with yourself. 
What delicious blending ! What a perfect interweft of 
thought and diction ! What a sweet companion ! " 

Lastly, let me quote a passage in which his 
thoughts return to Clifton, where it had been 
suggested that Greek should be omitted from the 
ordinary form-routine and taught in " sets," or 
separate classes : — 

"This is disturbing about Greek, *set' Greek. Yes, 
you would fill your school to overflowing, of course you 
would, so long as other places did not abandon the old 
lines. But it would be detestable treachery to the cause 

141 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



of education, of humanity. To me the learning of any 
blessed thing is a matter of little moment. Greek is not 
learned by nineteen-twentieths of our Public School boys.. 
But it is a baptism into a cult, a faith, not more irrational 
than other faiths or cults ; the baptism of a regeneration 
which releases us from I know not what original sin. 
And if a man does not see that, he is a fool, such 
a fool that I shouldn't wonder if he gravely asked 
me to explain what I meant by original sin in such 
a connection. . . ." 

So his thoughts reverted to the school he had left 
in 1892. In October, 1897, he returned to it on a 
visit. He was the guest of one of the house masters, 
Mr. Tait, and on Friday evening, October 29th, 
gave an address to the boys of the house. He had 
spoken for some minutes with brightness and vigour, 
when his voice grew thick and he was seen to stagger^ 
He died in less than two hours. 

His letters have been collected and piously given 
to the world by Mr. Irwin, one of his closest friends. 
By far the greatest number of them belong to those 
last five years in the Island — the happiest, perhaps,. 
of his life, certainly the happiest temperamentally. 
** Never the time and the place ..." but at least 
Brown was more fortunate than most men. He 
realised his dream, and it did not disappoint him. 
He could not carry off his friends to share it (and it 
belongs to criticism of these volumes to say that he 
was exceptionally happy in his friends), but he could 

142 



return and visit them or stay at home and write to 
them concerning the realisation, and be sure they 
understood. Therefore, although we desire more 
letters of the Clifton period — although twenty years 
are omitted, left blank to us — those that survive 
confirm a fame which, although never wide, was 
always unquestioned within its range. There could 
be no possibility of doubt concerning Brown. He 
was absolute. He lived a fierce, shy, spiritual life ; 
a wise man, keeping the child in his heart : he loved 
much and desired permanence in the love of his 
kind. " Diuturnity," says his great seventeenth- 
century namesake, "is a dream and folly of expec-- 
tation. There is nothing strictly immortal but 
immortality." And yet, prosit amdsse ! 



The railway took me on to Oxford — 

*'Like faithful hound returning 
For old sake's sake to each loved track 
With heart and memory burning." 

" I well remember," writes Mrs. Green of her 
husband, the late John Richard Green, " the 
passionate enthusiasm with which he watched from 
the train for the first sight of the Oxford towers 
against the sky:" and although our enthusiasm 
nowadays has to feed on a far tamer view than that 

H3 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



which saluted our forefathers when the stage-coach 
topped the rise of Shotover and its passengers beheld 
the city spread at their feet, yet what faithful son of 
Oxford can see her towers rise above the water- 
meadows and re-greet them without a thrill ? 

In the year 1688, and in a book entitled The 
Guardian's histrtcction, a Mr. Stephen Penton gave 
the world a pleasing and lifelike little narrative — 
superior, in my opinion, to anything in Verdant Green 
— telling us how a reluctant father v/as persuaded to 
send his son to Oxford ; what doubts, misgivings, 
hesitations he had, and how they were overcome. 
I take the story to be fictitious. It is written in the 
first person, professedly by the hesitating parent : 
but the parent can hardly have been Penton, for the 
story will not square with what we know of his life. 
The actual Penton was born, it seems, in 1640, and 
educated at Winchester and New College; proceeded 
to his fellowship, resided from 1659 to 1670, and was 
Principal of St. Edmund's Hall from 1675 to 1683. 
He appears to have been chaplain to the Earl of 
Aylesbury, and, according to Antony a Wood, 
possessed a " rambling head." He died in 1706. 

The writer in The Guardian's Instruction is 
portrayed for us — or is allowed to portray himself — 
rather as an honest country squire, who had himself 
spent a year or so of his youth at the University, 
but had withdrawn when Oxford was invaded by 

144 



MAY 

the Court and the trouble between King Charles 
and Parliament came to a head : and " God's grace, 
the Good example of my parents, and a natural 
love of virtue secured me so far as to leave Oxford, 
though not much more learned, yet not much worse 
than I came thither." A chill testimonial ! In short, 
the old squire (as I will take leave to call him) 
nursed a somewhat crotchety detestation of the 
place, insomuch " that when I came to have 
children, I did almost swear them in their childhood 
never to be friends with Oxford." 

He tried his eldest son with a course of foreign 
travel as a substitute for University training; but 
this turned out a failure, and he had the good sense 
to acknowledge his mistake. So for his second boy 
he cast about to find a profession ; " but what course 
to take I was at a loss : Cambridge was so far oif, 
I could not have an eye upon him; Oxford I was 
angry with." 

In this fix he consulted with a neighbour, " an old 
.grave learned divine," and rigid Churchman, who 
confessed that many of the charges against Oxford 
were well grounded, but averred that the place was 
mending. The truth was, the University had been 
loyal to the monarchy all through the Common- 
wealth times ; and when Oliver Cromwell was dead, 
and Richard dismounted, its members perceived, 
through the maze of changes and intrigues, that 

145 
11 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



in a little time the heart of the nation would revert 
to the government which twenty years before it had 
hated. And their impatient hopes of this " made 
the scholars talk aloud, drink healths, and curse 
Meroz in the very streets ; insomuch that when the 
King came in, they were not only like them that 
dream, but like them who are out of their wits, 
mad, stark, staring mad." This unholy " rag " (to 
modernise the old gentleman's language) continued 
for a twelvemonth : that is to say, until the Vice- 
Chancellor — holding that the demonstration, like 
Miss Mary Bennet's pianoforte playing in Pride and 
Prejudice, had delighted the company long enough — 
put his foot down. And from that time the Univer- 
sity became sober, modest, and studious as perhaps 
any in Europe. The old gentleman wound up with 
some practical advice, and a promise to furnish the 
squire with a letter of recommendation to one of 
the best tutors in Oxford. 

Thus armed, the squire (though still with mis- 
givings) was not long in getting on horseback with 
his wife, his daughters, and his young hopeful, and 
riding off to Oxford, where at first it seemed that 
his worst suspicions would be confirmed ; " for at 
ten o'clock in the inn, there arose such a roaring 
and singing that my hair stood on end, and my 
former prejudices were so heightened that I resolved 
to lose the journey and carry back my son again^ 



146 



presuming that no noise in Oxford could be made 
but scholars must do it" — a hoary misconception 
still cherished, or until recently, by the Metropolitan 
PoHce and the Oxford City Bench. In this instance 
a proctor intervened, and quelled the disturbance by 
sending "two young pert townsmen" to prison; 
" and quickly came to my chamber, and perceiving 
my boy designed for a gown, told me that it was 
for the preservation of such fine youths as he 
that the proctors made so bold with gentlemen's 
lodgings.*' The squire had some talk with this 
dignitary, who was a man of presence and suitable 
address, and of sufficient independence to deny — 
not for the first time in history — that dons were 
overpaid. 

Next morning the whole family trooped off to 
call upon the tutor whom their old neighbour had 
recommended. Oddly enough, the tutor seemed by 
no means overwhelmed by the honour. *' I thought 
to have found him mightily pleased with the opinion 
we had of his conduct, and the credit of having 
a gentleman's son under his charge, and the father 
with cap in hand. Instead of all this he talked 
at a rate as if the gentry were obliged to tutors 
more than tutors to them." The tutor, in short, 
was decidedly tart in his admonitions to this honest 
family — he did not forget, either, to assure them 
that {generally) a college tutor was worse paid than 

147 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



a dancing-master. Here is a specimen of his advice 
— sound and practical enough in its way : — 

** I understand by one of your daughters that you 
have brought him up a fine padd to keep here for his 
health's sake. Now I will tell you the use of an horse 
in Oxford, and then do as you think fit. The horse 
must be kept at an ale-house or an inn, and he must have 
leave to go once every day to see him eat oats, because 
the master's eye makes him fat ; and it will not be 
genteel to go often to an house and spend nothing ; and 
then there may be some danger of the horse growing 
festy if he be not used often, so you must give him leave 
to go to Abingdon once every week, to look out of the 
tavern window and see the maids sell turnips ; and in 
one month or two come home with a surfeit of poisoned 
wine, and save any farther trouble by dying, and then you 
will be troubled to send for your horse again. ..." 

The humour of college tutors has not greatly 
altered in two hundred years. I have known one 
or two capable of the sardonic touch in those 
concluding words. But conceive its effect upon 
the squire's lady and daughters ! No : you need 
not trouble to do so, for the squire describes it : 
*' When the tutor was gone out of the room, I 
asked how they liked the person and his converse. 
My boy clung about his mother and cry'd to go 
"home again, and she had no more wit than to be 
of the same mind ; she thought him too weakly 
to undergo so much hardship as she foresaw was 

148 



to be expected. My daughter, who (instead of 
catechism and Lady's Calling) had been used to 
read nothing but speeches in romances, and hearing 
nothing of Love and Honour in all the talk, fell into 
downright scolding at him ; call'd him the merest 
scholar ; and if this were your Oxford breeding, 
they had rather he should go to Constantinople to 
learn manners ! But I, who was older and under- 
stood the language, call'd them all great fools. 

On the tutor's return they begged to have his 
company at dinner, at their inn : but he declined, 
kept the young man to dine with him, and next day 
invited the family to luncheon. They accepted, fully 
expecting (after the austerity of his discourse) to be 
starved : " and the girles drank chocolette at no rate 
in the morning, for fear of the worst.*' But they 
were by no means starved. " It was very pleasant," 
the squire confesses, **to see, when we came, the 
constrained artifice of an unaccustomed complement." 
There were silver tankards "heaped upon one 
another," " napkins some twenty years younger than 
the rest," and glasses "fit for a Dutchman at an 
East-India Return.'" The dinner was full enough for 
ten. " I was asham'd, but would not disoblige him, 
considering with myself that I should put this man 
to such a charge of forty shillings at least, to 
entertain me ; when for all his honest care and pains 

149 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



he is to have but forty or fifty shillings a quarter ; 
so that for one whole quarter he must doe the 
drudgery to my son for nothing." After dinner, our 
good squire strolled off to a public bowling-green, 
"that being the onely recreation I can affect." And 
" coming in, I saw half a score of the finest youths 
the sun, I think, ever shined upon. They walked to 
and fro, with their hands in their pockets, to see a 
match played by some scholars and some gentlemen 
fam'd for their skill. I gaped also and stared as a 
man in his way would doe ; but a country ruff 
gentleman, being like to lose, did swear at such a rate 
that my heart did grieve that those fine young men 
should hear it, and know there was such a thing as 
swearing in the kingdom. Coming to my lodging, 
I charged my son never to go to such publick places 
unless he resolved to quarrel with me." 

And so, having settled the lad and fitted him up 
with good advice, the father, mother, and sisters 
returned home. But the squire, being summoned to 
Oxford shortly after to ''sit in parliament'' (pre- 
sumably in the last Parliament held at Oxford, in 
March, 1681), took that opportunity to walk the 
streets and study the demeanour of the *' scholars." 
And this experiment would seem to have finally 
satisfied him. " I walk'd the streets as late as most 
people, and never in ten days ever saw any scholar 
rude or disordered : so that as I grow old, and more 

150 



MAY 

engaged to speak the truth, I do repent of the 
ill-opinion I have had of that place, and hope to 
be farther obhged by a very good account of my 
son." 

Old Stephen Penton may have had a rambling 
head ; but unless I have thumbed the bloom off his 
narrative in my attempt to summarise it, the reader 
will allow that he knew how to write. He gives us 
the whole scene in the fewest possible touches : he 
wastes no words in describing the personages in his 
small comedy — comic idyll I had rather call it, for 
after a fashion it reminds me of the immortal chatter 
between Gorgo and Praxinoe in the fifteenth idyll 
of Theocritus. There the picture is : the honest 
opinionated country squire ; the acidulous tutor ; the 
coltish son; the fond, foohsh, fussing mother; the 
prinking young ladies with their curls and romantic 
notions; the colours of all as fresh as if laid on 
yesterday, the humour quite untarnished after two 
hundred years. And I wonder the more at the 
vivacity of this little sketch because, as many writers 
have pointed out, no one has yet built upon University 
life a novel of anything like first-class merit, and the 
conclusion has been drawn that the elements of pro- 
found human interest are wanting in that life. " Is 
this so ? " asks the editor of Stephen Penton's 
reminiscences in a yolume published by the Oxford 
Historical Society — 

151 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



" In spite of the character given to Oxford of being a 
city of short memories and abruptly-ended friendships,, 
in spite of the inchoative quaHties of youths of eighteen 
or twenty, especially in respect to the ' ruling passion ' so 
dear to novelists, yet surely in the three or four years 
spent at Oxford by an incredible company of young 
students ' fresh from public schools, and not yet tossed 
about and hardened in the storms of life ' — some of them 
Penton's 'finest youths,' some obviously otherwise — 
there must be, one would think, abundance of romantic 
incident awaiting its Thackeray or Meredith. For how 
many have these years been the turning point of a 
life ...!'' 

There at any rate is the fact : the novel of 
University life has not been written yet, and perhaps 
never will be. I am not at all sure that The 
Adventures of Mr, Verdant Green do not mark the 
nearest approach to it — save the mark ! And I am 
not at all sure that The Adventures of Mr, Verdant 
Green can be called a novel at all, while I am quite 
certain it cannot be called a novel of first-class 
merit. Tom Brown at Oxford still counts its 
admirers, and has, I hear, attained the dignity of 
translation into French ; but Tom Brown, though 
robust enough, never seemed to get over his trans- 
plantation from Rugby — possibly because his author's 
heart remained at Rugby. "Loss and Gain" is not a 
book for the many; and the many never did justice 
to Mr. Hermann Merivale's " Faucit of Balliol" or 



MAY 

Mr. St. John Tyrwhitt's "Hugh Heron of Christ 
Church." Neither of these two novels obtained the 
hearing it deserved — and '* Faucit of BaUiol " was a 
really remarkable book : but neither of them aimed 
at giving a full picture of Oxford life. And the 
interest of Miss Broughton's "Belinda" and Mr. 
Hardy's " Jude the Obscure" lies outside the 
proctor's rounds. Yes (and humiliating as the 
confession may be), with all its crudities and 
absurdities, Verdant Green does mark the nearest 
approach yet made to a representative Oxford 
novel. 

How comes this ? Well, to begin with. Verdant 
Green, with all his faults, did contrive to be 
exceedingly youthful and high-spirited. And in the 
second place, with all its faults, it did convey some^ 
sense of what I may call the "glamour" of Oxford. 
Now the University, on its part, being fed with a 
constant supply of young men between the ages 
of eighteen and twenty, does contrive, with all its 
faults, to keep up a fair show of youth and high 
spirits; and even their worst enemies will admit 
that Oxford and Cambridge wear, in the eyes of 
their sons at any rate, a certain glamour. You may 
argue that glamour is glamour, an illusion which will 
wear oif in time ; an illusion, at all events, and to ber 
tr'='ated as such by the wise author intent on getting 
at truth. To this I answer that, while it lasts, this 

153 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



glamour is just as much a fact as The Times news- 
paper, or St. Paul's Cathedral, just as real a feature 
of Oxford as Balliol College, or the river, or the 
Vice-Chancellor's poker: and until you recognise it 
for a fact and a feature of the place, and allow for it, 
you have not the faintest prospect of realising Oxford. 
Each succeeding generation finds that glamour, or 
brings it ; and each generation, as it passes, deems 
that its successor has either found or brought less of it. 
But the glamour is there all the while. In turning over 
a book the other day, written in 1870 by the Rev. 
Robert Stephen Hawker, I come on this passage : — 

** When I recall my own undergraduate life of thirty 
years and upwards agone, I feel, notwithstanding modern 
vaunt, the laudator tempcris acti earnest within me yet, and 
strong. Nowadays, as it seems to me, there is but little 
originality of character in the still famous University ; a 
dread of eccentric reputation appears to pervade College 
and Hall : every ' Oxford man,' to adopt the well-known 
name, is subdued into sameness within and without, 
controlled as it were into copyism and mediocrity by the 
smoothing-iron of the nineteenth century. Whereas in 
my time and before it there were distinguished names, 
famous in every mouth for original achievements and 
'deeds of daring-do.' There were giants in those days 
— men of varied renown — and they arose and won for 
themselves in strange fields of fame, record and place. 
Each became in his day a hero of the Iliad or Odyssey 
of Oxford life — a kind of Homeric man." 

154 



To which I am constrained to reply, " Mere stuff 
and nonsense ! " Mr. Hawker — and more credit to 
him — carried away Homeric memories of his own 
seniors and contemporaries. But was it in nature 
that Mr. Hawker should discover Homeric propor- 
tions in the feats of men thirty years his juniors? 
How many of us, I ask, are under any flattering 
illusion about the performances of our juniors? We 
cling to the old fond falsehood that there were giants 
in our days. We honestly believed they were giants ; 
it would hurt us to abandon that belief. It does not 
hurt us in the least to close the magnifying-glass 
upon the feats of those who follow us. But this 
generation, too, will have its magnifying-glass. 
" There were giants in our days ? " To be sure 
there were ; and there are giants, too, in these, but 
others, not we, have the eyes to see them. 

Say that the scales have fallen from our eyes. 
Very well, we must e'en put them on again if we 
would write a novel of University life. And, be 
pleased to note, it does not follow, because we 
see the place differently now, that we see it more 
truly. Also, it does not follow, because Oxford 
during the last twenty years has, to the eye of the 
visitor, altered very considerably, that the character- 
istics of Oxford have altered to anything hke the 
same extent. Undoubtedly they have been modified 
hy the relaxation and suspension of the laws 

155 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 

forbidding Fellows to marry. Undoubtedly the 
brisk growth of red-brick houses along the north 
of the city, the domestic hearths, afternoon teas 
and perambulators, and all things covered by the 
opprobrious name of " Parks-system," have done 
something to efface the difference between Oxford 
and other towns. But on the whole I think they 
have done surprisingly little. 

i!- ^i i:- * 

Speaking as a writer of novels, then, I should 

say that to write a good novel entirely concerned 

with Oxford lies close upon impossibility, and will 

prophesy that, if ever it comes to be achieved, it 

will be a story of friendship. But her glamour 

is for him to catch who can, whether in prose 

or rhyme. 

ALMA MATER. 

Know you her secret none can utter ? 

Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown ? 
Still on the spire the pigeons flutter ; 

Still by the gateway flits the gown ; 
Still on the street, from corbel and gutter, 

Faces of stone look down. 

Faces of stone, and other faces — 

Some from library windows wan 
Forth on her gardens, her green spaces 

Peer and turn to their books anon. 
Hence, my Muse, from the green oases 

Gather the tent, begone ! 

■56 



MAY 



Nay, should she by the pavement linger 
Under the rooms where once she played. 

Who from the feast would rise and fling her 
One poor sou for her serenade ? 

One poor laugh from the antic finger 
Thrumming a lute string frayed ? 

Once, my dear — but the world was young then — 
Magdalen elms and Trinity limes — 

Lissom the blades and the backs that swung then, 
Eight good men in the good old times — 

Careless we, and the chorus flung then 
Under St. Mary's chimes ! 

Reins lay loose and the ways led random — 
Christ Church meadow and Iffley track — 

~** Idleness horrid and dogcart " (tandem) — 
Aylesbury grind and Bicester pack — 

Pleasant our lines, and faith ! we scanned 'em : 
Having that artless knack. 

Come, old limmer, the times grow colder : 
Leaves of the creeper redden and fall. 

Was it a hand then clapped my shoulder ? 
— Only the wind by the chapel wall. 

Dead leaves drift on the lute ; so . . . fold her 
Under the faded shawl. 

"Never w^e wince, though none deplore us, 
We, who go reaping that we sowed ; 

Cities at cock-crow wake before us — 
Hey, for the lilt of the London road! 

One look back, and a rousing chorus ! 
Never a palinode ! 

^57 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Still on her spire the pigeons hover ; 

Still by her gateway haunts the gown ; 
Ah, but her secret ? You, young lover, 

Drumming her old ones forth from town, 
Know you the secret none discover ? 

Tell it — when you go down. 

Yet if at length you seek her, prove her, 
Lean to her whispers never so nigh ; 

Yet if at last not less her lover 

You in your hansom leave the High ; 

Down from her towers a ray shall hover — 
Touch you, a passer-by ! 



158 



Tun( 



THE following verses made their appearance some 
years ago in the pages of the Pall Mall 
Magazine. Since then (I am assured) they have 
put a girdle round the world, and threaten, if not 
to keep pace with the banjo hymned by Mr. Kipling, 
at least to become the most widely -diffused of 
their author's works. I take it to be of a piece 
with his usual perversity that until now they 
have never been republished except for private 
amusement. 

They belong to a mood, a moment, and I 
cannot be at pains to rewrite a single stanza, 
even though an allusion to " Oom Paul " cries 
out to be altered or suppressed. But, after all, 
the allusion is not likely to trouble President 
Kruger's massive shade as it slouches across 
the Elysian fields ; and after all, though he 
became our enemy, he remained a sportsman. So 
I hope we may glance at his name in jest 
without a suspicion of mocking at the tragedy of 
his fate. 

159 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



THE FAMOUS BALLAD OF THE 
JUBILEE CUP. 

You may lift me up in your arms, lad, and turn my face 

to the sun, 
For a last look back at the dear old track where the 

Jubilee Cup was won ; 
And draw your chair to my side, lad — no, thank ye, I 

feel no pain — 
For I 'm going out with the tide, lad, but I '11 tell you the 

tale again. 

I 'm seventy-nine, or nearly, and my head it has long 

turned grey, 
But it all comes back as clearly as though it was 

yesterday — 
The dust, and the bookies shouting around the clerk of 

the scales, 
And the clerk of the course, and the nobs in force, and 

'Is 'Ighness, the Pr*nce of W*les. 

^Twas a nine-hole thresh to wind'ard, but none of us 

cared for that. 
With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish 

along the flat. 
** Stiff?" Ah, well you may say it! Spot-barred, and 

at five-stone-ten ! 
But at two and a bisque I 'd ha' run the risk ; for I was 

a greenhorn then. 

So we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red 
swallow-tail — 

1 60 



JUNE 



There was young Ben Bolt, and the Portland colt, and 

Aston Villa, and Yale ; 
And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander, and The Saint, 
And the German Emperor's Meteor, a-looking as fresh 

as paint ; 

John Roberts (scratch), and Safety Match, The Lascar, 

and Lorna Doone, 
Com Paul (a bye), and Romany Rye, and me upon 

Wooden Spoon ; 
And some of us cut for partners, and some of us strung 

to baulk. 
And some of us tossed for stations — But there, what use 

to talk ? 

Three-quarter-back on the Kingsclere crack was station 

enough for me, 
With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal 

a-lee ! 
And I leaned and patted her centre-bit, and eased the 

quid in her cheek, 
With a " Soh, my lass ! " and a " Woa, you brute ! " — 

for she could do all but speak. 

She was geared a thought too high, perhaps; she was 

trained a trifle fine; 
But she had the grand reach forward! / never saw 

such a line ! 
Smooth-bored, clean-run, from her fiddle head with its 

dainty ear half-cock, 
Hard-bit, pur sang, from her overhang to the heel of her 

off hind sock. 

i6i 
12 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Sir Robert he walked beside me as I worked her down 

to the mark ; 
*' There 's money on this, my lad," said he, *' and most 

of 'em's running dark; 
But ease the sheet if you're bunkered, and pack the- 

scrimmages tight, 
And use your slide at the distance, and we'll drink to 

your health to-night ! " 

But I bent and tightened my stretcher. Said I to 

myself, said I, — 
*' John Jones, this here is the Jubilee Cup, and you have 

to do or die." 
And the words weren't hardly spoken when the umpire 

shouted " Play ! " 
And we all kicked off from the Gasworks end with a- 

"Yoicks!" and a "Gone away!" 

And at first I thought of nothing, as the clay flew by in- 

lumps, 
But stuck to the old Ruy Lopez, and wondered who'd 

call for trumps, 
And luffed her close to the cushion, and watched each 

one as it broke. 
And in triple file up the Rowley mile we went like a 

trail of smoke. 

The Lascar made the running : but he didn't amount to 

much. 
For old Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it 

back to touch ; 

162 



JUNE 



And the whole first flight led off with the right, as The 

Saint took up the pace, 
And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it 

there with an ace. 

John Roberts had given a miss in baulk, but Villa 

cleared with a punt ; 
And keeping her service hard and low, The Meteor 

forged to the front. 
With Romany Rye to windward at dormy and two to 

play, 
And Yale close up — but a Jubilee Cup isn't run for 

every day. 

We laid our course for the Warner — I tell you the pace 

was hot ! 
And again off Tattenham Corner a blanket covered the 

lot. 
dheck side! Check side! Now steer her wide! and 

barely an inch of room, 
W^ith The Lascar's tail over our lee rail, and brushing 

Leander's boom ! 

We were running as strong as ever — eight knots — but it 

couldn't last ; 
For the spray and the bails were flying, the whole field 

taiHng fast ; 
And the Portland colt had shot his bolt, and Yale was 

bumped at the Doves, 
And The Lascar resigned to Steinitz, stale-mated in 

fifteen moves. 

163 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



It was bellows to mend with Roberts — starred three for 

a penalty kick : 
But he chalked his cue and gave 'em the butt, and Oom 

Paul scored the trick — 
*' Off- side — no-ball — and at fourteen all! Mark cock! 

and two for his nob ! " — 
When W. G. ran clean through his lee, and yorked him 

twice with a lob. 

He yorked him twice on a crumbling pitch, and wiped 

his eye with a brace, 
But his guy-rope split with the strain of it, and he 

dropped back out of the race; 
And I drew a bead on The Meteor's lead, and challenging 

none too soon, 
Bent over and patted her garboard strake, and called 

upon Wooden Spoon. 

She was all of a shiver forward, the spoondrift thick on 

her flanks, 
But I 'd brought her an easy gambit, and nursed her 

over the banks; 
She answered her helm — the darling! — and woke up 

now with a rush, 
While The Meteor's jock he sat like a rock — he knew 

we rode for his brush 1 

There was no one else left in it. The Saint was using 

his whip, 
And Safety Match, with a lofting catch, was pockete,' 

deep at slip; 

164 



JUNE 

And young Ben Bolt with his niblick took miss at 

Leander's lunge, 
But topped the net with the ricochet, and Steinitz threw 

up the sponge. 

But none of the lot could stop the rot — nay, don't ask 

me to stop ! — 
The Villa had called for lemons, Oom Paul had taken 

his drop, 
And both were kicking the referee. Poor fellow ! he 

done his best ; 
But, being in doubt, he'd ruled them out — which he 

always did when pressed. 

So, inch by inch, I tightened the winch, and chucked 

the sandbags out — 
I heard the nursery cannons pop, I heard the bookies 

shout : 
"The Meteor wins!" " No, Wooden Spoon ! " "Check!" 

" Vantage ! " " Leg before ! " 
" Last lap ! " " Pass Nap ! " At his saddle-flap I put 

up the helm and wore. 

You may overlap at the saddle-flap, and yet be loo'd on 
the tape : 

And it ail depends upon changing ends, how a seven- 
year-old will shape; 

It was tack and tack to the Lepe and back— a fair ding- 
dong to the Ridge, 

And he led by his forward canvas yet as we shot 'neatk 
Hammersmith Bridge. 

165 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



He led by his forward canvas — he led from his strongest 
suit — 

But along we went on a roaring scent, and at Fawley 
I gained a foot. 

He fisted off with his jigger, and gave me his wash- 
too late! 

Deuce — vantage — check ! By neck and neck, we rounded 
into the straight. 

I could hear the "Conquering 'Ero" a-crashing on 

Godfrey's band, 
And my hopes fell sudden to zero, just there with the 

race in hand — 
In sight of the Turf's Blue Ribbon, in sight of the 

umpire's tape, 
As I felt the tack of her spinnaker crack, as I heard the 

steam escape ! 

Had I lost at that awful juncture my presence of mind ? 

. . . but no ! 
I leaned and felt for the puncture, and plugged it .there 

with my toe . . . 
Hand over hand by the Members' Stand I lifted and 

eased her up, 
Shot — clean and fair — to the crossbar there, and landed 

the Jubilee Cup ! 

'• The odd by a head, and leg before," so the Judge he 

gave the word : 
And the Umpire shouted " Over ! " but I neither spoke 

nor stirred. 

i66 



JUNE 

They crowded round : for there on the ground I lay in a 

dead-cold swoon, 
Pitched neck and crop on the turf atop of my beautiful 

Wooden Spoon. 

Her dewlap tire was punctured, her bearings all 

red - hot ; 
She 'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her 

running gear in a knot ; 
And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened 

her girth 
And led her away to the knacker's. She had raced her 

last on earth ! 

But I mind me well of the tear that fell from the eye 

of our noble Pr*nce, 
And the things he said as he tucked me in bed — and 

I 've lain there ever since ; 
Tho' it all gets mixed up queerly that happened before 

my spill, — 
But I draw my thousand yearly: it'll pay for the 

doctor's bill. 

I 'm going out with the tide, lad. — You '11 dig me a 

humble grave, 
And whiles you will bring your bride, lad, and your sons 

(if sons you have). 
And there, when the dews are weeping, and the echoes 

murmur " Peace ! " 
And the salt, salt tide comes creeping and covers the 

popping-crease, 

167 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



In the hour when the ducks deposit their eggs with a 

boasted force, 
They '11 look and whisper " How was it ? '' and you '11 

take them over the course, 
And your voice will break as you try to speak of the 

glorious first of June, 
When the Jubilee Cup, with John Jones up, was won 

upon Wooden Spoon. 



"To me," said a well-known authority upon 
education, "these athletics are the devil." To me 
no form of athletics is the devil but that of paying 
other people to be athletic for you; and this, un- 
happily — and partly, I believe, through our neglect 
to provide our elementary schools with decent play- 
grounds — is the form affected nowadays by large 
and increasing crowds of Englishmen. The youth 
of our urban populations would seem to be absorbed 
in this vicarious sport. It throngs the reading- 
rooms of free public libraries and working men's 
institutes in numbers which delight the reformer 
until he discovers that all this avidity is for racing 
tips and cricket or football "items." I am not, 
as a rule, a croaker; but I do not think the young 
Briton concerns himself as he did in the fifties, 
sixties, and seventies of the last century with poetry, 
history, politics, or indeed anything that asks for 
serious thought. I believe all this professional 

1 68 



JUNE 

sport likely to be as demoralising for us as a nation 
as were the gladiatorial shows for Rome; and I 
cannot help attributing to it some measure of that 
combativeness at second-hand — that itch to fight 
anyone and everyone by proxy — which, abetted by 
a cheap press, has for twenty years been our curse. 

Curse or no curse, it is spreading ; and something 
of its progress may be marked in the two following 
dialogues, the first of which was written in 1897. 
Many of the names in it have already passed some 
way toward oblivion ; but the moral, if I mistake 
not, survives them, and the warning has become 
more urgent than ever. 

THE FIRST DIALOGUE ON CRICKET. 
1897. 

Some time in the summer of 1897 — I think towards 
the end of August — I was whiling away the close of 
an afternoon in the agreeable twilight of Mr. D — — 's 
bookshop in the Strand, when I heard my name 
uttered by some one who had just entered; and, 
turning about, saw my friend Verinder, in company 
with Grayson and a strapping youth of twenty or 
thereabouts, a stranger to me. Verinder and Grayson 
share chambers in the Temple, on the strength (it 
is understood) of a common passion for cricket. 
Longer ago than we care to remember — but Cam- 
bridge bowlers remember— Grayson was captain of 

169 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



the Oxford eleven. His contemporary, Verinder, never 
won his v^ay into the team : he was a comparatively 
poor man and obliged to read, and reading spoiled 
his cricket. Therefore he had to content himself 
with knocking up centuries in college matches, and 
an annual performance among the Seniors. It was 
rumoured that Grayson — always a just youth, too — 
would have given him his blue, had not Verinder's 
conscientiousness been more than Roman. My own 
belief is that the distinction was never offered, and 
that Verinder liked his friend all the better for it. 
At the same time the disappointment of what at 
that time of life was a serious ambition may account 
for a trace of acidity which began, before he left 
college, to flavour his comments on human affairs, 
and has since become habitual to him. 

Verinder explained that he and his companions 
were on their way home from Lord's, where they 
had been " assisting " — he laid an ironical stress on 
the word — in an encounter between Kent and 
Middlesex. " And, as we were passing, I dragged 

these fellows in, just to see if old D had 

anything." Verinder is a book-collector. "By the 
way, do you know Sammy Dawkins ? You may call 
him the Boy when you make his better acquaintance 
and can forgive him for having chosen to go to 
Cambridge. Thebes did his green, unknowing youth 
engage, and — as the Oxford Magazine gloomily 



170 



JUNE 

prophesied — he bowls out Athens in his later 
age." The Boy laughed cheerfully and blushed. 
I felt a natural awe in holding out an exceed- 
ingly dusty hand to an athlete whose fame had 
already shaken the Antipodes. But it is the way 
of young giants to be amiable; and indeed this 
one saluted me with a respect which he afterwards 
accounted for ingenuously enough — " He always felt 
like that towards a man who had written a book: 
it seemed to him a tremendous thing to have done, 
don't you know ? " 

I thought to myself that half an hour in Mr. 

D 's shop (which contains new books as well 

as old) would correct his sense of the impressiveness 
of the feat. Indeed, I read a dawning trouble in 
the glance he cast around the shelves. " It takes 
a fellow's breath away," he confessed. "Such a 
heap of them ! But then I 've never been to the 
British Museum." 

"Then," said I, "you must be employing re- 
-searchers for the book you are writing." 

"What?" he protested. "Me writing a book? 
Not likely!" 

"An article for some magazine, then?" 

" Not a line." 

"Well, at least you have been standing for your 
photograph, to illustrate some book on Cricket that 
another fellow is writing." 

171 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



He laughed. 

"You have me there. Yes, I 've been photographed 
in the act of bowhng — ' Before ' and * After ' : quite 
like Somebody's Hair Restorer." 

*' Well," said I, " and I wish you had contributed 
to the letterpress, too. For the wonder to me is, 
not that you cricketers write books (for all the 
world wants to read them), but that you do it so 
prodigiously well." 

"Oh," said he, "you mean Ranji! But he's 
a terror.'* 

" I was thinking of him, of course ; but of others 
as well. Here, for instance, is a book I have just 
bought, or rather an instalment of one : The 
Encyclopcedia of Sporty edited by the Earl of Suffolk 
and Berkshire, Mr. Hedley Peek, and Mr. Aflalo, 
published by Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen : Part IV., 
CHA to CRO. I turn to the article on Cricket, 
and am referred *for all questions connected with 
fast bowling, and for many questions associated 
with medium and slow ' to * the following paper 
by Tom Richardson.' " 

" Tom Richardson ought to know," put in 
Grayson. 

" Good Heavens ! " said I, " I am not disputing 
that! But I remember Ruskin's insisting— I think 
in Sesame and Lilies — that no true artist ever talks 
much of his art. The greatest are silent. 'The 



JUNE 

moment/ says Ruskin, *a man can really do his 
work he becomes speechless about it. All words 
become idle to him — all theories.' And he goes on 
to ask, in his vivacious way, * Does a bird theorise 
about building its nest ? ' Well, as to that one 
cannot be sure. But I take it we may call 
Richardson a true artist ? " 

" Certainly we may." 

" And allow that he can really do his work ? " 

"Rather!" 

"Then it seems to me that Ruskin's rule may 
apply to other arts, but not to Cricket. For here 
is Richardson not only talking about fast bowling, 
but expressing himself with signal ease and pre- 
cision. Listen to this, for instance : — 

'"A ball is said to hveak when, on touching the 
ground, it deviates sharply from its original line of 

flight.' 

And again : — 

" ' A ball is said to have " spin " on it when it gains 
an acceleration of pace, not necessarily a variation of 
direction, on touching the ground.' 

" It would be hard, I think, to improve upon 
these definitions. But let me satisfy you that I was 
not exaggerating when I spoke of the dignity of 
Mr. Richardson's Enghsh style; — 

173 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



"'The bowler, whether born or made, should cultivate 
and acquire a high action and a good swing of arm and 
body, as such a delivery will make the ball rise quickly 
and perpendicularly from the pitch ; but the action must 
at all costs be easy and free, qualities which neither 
imitation nor education must allow to disappear.' 

*' We often hear complaints — and reasonable 
ones for the most part — that the wage given to first- 
class professional cricketers is no longer adequate. 
But one of the pet arguments for increasing it is 
that their employment begins and ends with the 
summer. Now, I certainly think that, while bowlers 
write in this fashion, they can have little or nothing 
to dread from the v/inter months." 

'' I declare," said Grayson, " I believe you are 
jealous! " 

" Well, and why not ? For, mark you, Mr. 
Richardson's is no singular case, of which we might 
say — to comfort ourselves — that the Goddess of 
Cricket, whom he serves so mightily, has touched 
his lips and inspired him for a moment. Turn over 
these pages. We poor novelists, critics, men of 
letters, have no such paper, such type, as are lavished 
on the experts who write here upon their various 
branches of sport. Our efforts are not illustrated 
by the Swan Engraving Company. And the rub 
for us is that these gentlemen deserve it all ! I am 
not going to admit — to you, at any rate — that their 

174 



JUNE 

subjects are of higher interest than ours, or of more 
importance to the world. But I confess that, as 
a rule, they make theirs more interesting. When 
Mr. C. B. Fiy discourses about Long Jumping, or 
Mr. W. Ellis about Coursing, or Mr. F C. J. Ford 
upon Australian Cricket, there are very few novelists 
to whom I had rather be listening. It cannot be 
mere chance that makes them all so eloquent ; nor 
is it that they have all risen together to the height 
of a single great occasion; for though each must 
have felt it a great occasion when he was invited 
to assist in this sumptuous work, I remarked a 
similar eloquence in those who contributed, the 
other day, to Messrs. Longmans' * Badminton 
Library.' When sportsmen take to writing 
admirable English, and peers of the realm to^ 
editing it, I hardly see where we poor men of 
letters can expect to come in." 

"The only cure that I can see," said Verinder, 
"is for Her Majesty to turn you into peers of the 
realm. Some of you suggest this from time to 
time, and hitherto it has puzzled me to discover 
why. But if it would qualify you to edit the 
writings of sportsmen " 

"And why not? These books sell: and if 
aristocracy have its roots in commerce, shall not 
the sale of books count as high as the sale of 
beer? The principle has been granted. Already^ 

^75 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



the purveyors of cheap and wholesome literature 
are invited to kneel before the Queen, and receive 
the accolade,'' 

"She must want to cut Tit-bits out of them," 
put in the Boy. 

" Of course we must look at the proportion of 
profit. Hitherto the profits of beer and literature 
have not been comparable; but this wonderful 
boom in books of sport may redress the balance. 
Every one buys them. When you entered I was 
glancing through a volume of new verse, but without 
the smallest intention of buying it. My purchases, 
you see, are all sporting works, including, of course. 
Prince Ranjitsinhji's Jubilee Book of Cricket,'" 

** Just so," snapped Verinder. *' You buy books 
about sport : we spend an afternoon in looking on at 
sport. And so, in one way or another, we assist at 
the damnation of the sporting spirit in England." 

"When Verinder begins in this style an oration is 
never far distant. I walked back with the three to 
the Temple. On our way he hissed and sputtered 
like a kettle, and we had scarcely reached his 
chamber before he boiled over in real earnest. 

" We ought never to have been there ! It 's well 

enough for the Boy : he has been playing steadily all 

the summer, first for Cambridge and afterwards for 

'his county. Now he has three days off and is taking 

his holiday. But Grayson and I — What the deuce 



176 



JUNE 

have we to do in that galley ? Far better we 
joined a club down at Dulwich or Tooting and put 
in a little honest play, of a week-end, on our own 
account. We should be crocks, of course : our 
cricketing is done. But we should be honest crocks. 
At least it is better to take a back row in the per- 
formance, and find out our own weakness, than 
pay for a good seat at Lord's or the Oval, and be 
connoisseurs of what Abel and Hearne and Brockwell 
can and cannot do. If a man wants to sing the 
praises of cricket as a national game, let him go down 
to one of the Public Schools and watch its close or 
cricket-ground on a half-holiday : fifteen acres of 
turf, and a dozen games going on together, from Big 
Side down to the lowest form match : from three to 
four hundred boys in white flannels — all keen as 
mustard, and each occupied with his own game, and 
playing it to the best of his powers. Playing it — 
mark you : not looking on. That 's the point : and 
that 's what Wellington meant by saying — if he ever 
said it — that Waterloo was won upon the playing- 
fields at Eton. In my old school if a boy shirked 
the game he had a poor time. Say that he shirked 
it for an afternoon's lawn-tennis : it was lucky for 
him if he didn't find his racquet, next day, nailed 
up on the pavilion door like a stoat on a gamekeeper's 
tree. That was the sporting spirit, sir, if the sporting 
spirit means something that is to save England : and 

177 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



we shall not win another Waterloo by enclosing 
twenty-two gladiators in a ring of twenty-two 
thousand loafers, whose only exercise is to cheer 
when somebody makes a stroke, howl when some 
other body drops a catch, and argue that a batsman 
was not out when the umpire has given him ' leg- 
oefore.' Even at football matches the crowd has 
some chance of taking physical exercise on its own 
account — by manhandling the referee when the 
game is over. Sport ? The average subscriber to 
Lord's is just as much of a sportsman as the 
Spaniard who watches a bull-fight, and just a trifle 
more of a sportsman than the bar-loafer who backs 
a horse he has never clapped eyes on. You may 
call it Cricket if you like : I call it assisting at a 
Gladiatorial Show. True cricket is left to the village 
greens." 

" Steady, old man ! " protested the Boy. 

'' I repeat it. For the spirit of the game you 
might have gone, a few years ago, to the Public 
Schools ; but even they are infected now with the 
gladiatorial ideal. As it is you must go to the 
village green ; for the spirit, you understand — not 
the letter " 

" I believe you ! " chuckled young Dawkins. ^' Last 
season I put in an oif day with the villagers at home. 
We played the nearest market town, and I put myself 
on to bowl slows. Second wicket down, in came the 



178 



JUNE 

fattest man I ever saw. He was a nurseryman and 
seedsman in private life, and he fairly hid the wicket- 
keep. In the first over a ball of mine got up a bit 
and took him in the ab-do-men. * How's that?' 
I asked. ' Well,' said the umpire, ' I wasn't azackly 
looking, so I leave it to you. If it hit en in the 
paunch, it's "not out"; and the fella must have 
suffered. But if it took en in the rear, I reckon it 
didn't hurt much, and it's *' leg-before." ' I suppose 
that is what you would call the ' spirit ' of cricket. 
But, I say, if you have such a down on Lord's and 
what you call the gladiatorial business, why on earth 
do you go ? " 

" Isn't that the very question I 've been asking 
myself?" replied Verinder testily. 

" Perhaps we have an explanation here," I sug- 
gested ; for during Verinder's harangue I had settled 
myself in the window-seat, and was turning over the 
pages of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book. 

" ' It is a grand thing for people who have to work most 
of their time to have an interest in something or other 
outside their particular groove. Cricket is a first-rate 
interest. The game has developed to such a pitch that 
it is worth taking interest in. Go to Lord's and analyse 
the crowd. There are all sorts and conditions of 
men there round the ropes — bricklayers, bank-clerks, 
soldiers, postmen, and stockbrokers. And in the 
pavilion are Q.C.'s, artists, archdeacons, and leader- 
writers. . . .' " 



179 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



" Oh, come ! " Grayson puts in. *' Isn't that rather 
hard on the stockbroker ? " 
'' It is what the book says. 

" ' Bad men, good men, workers and idlers, all are 
there, and all at one in their keenness over the game. 
. . . Anything that puts very many different kinds of 
people on. a common ground must promote sympathy 
and kindly feelings. The workman does not come away 
from seeing Middlesex beating Lancashire, or vice versa, 
with evil in his heart against the upper ten ; nor the 
Mayfair homme de plaisiv with a feeling of contempt for 
the street-bred masses. Both alike are thinking how 
well Mold bowled, and how cleanly Stoddart despatched 
Briggs's high-tossed slow ball over the awning. Even 
that cynical nil admivavi lawyer ' " 

I pointed a finger at Verinder. 

" ' Even that cynical nil admirari lawyer caught himself 
cheering loudly when Sir Timothy planted Hallam's 
would-be yorker into the press-box. True, he caught 
himself being enthusiastic, and broke off at once ' " 

'* When I found it hadn't killed a reporter," 
Verinder explained. '* But I hope Ranjitsinhji has 
some better arguments than these if he wants to 
defend gladiatorial cricket. At least he allows that 
a change has come over the game of late years, and 
that this change has to be defended ? " 

"Yes, he admits the change, and explains how it 
came about. In the beginning we had local club 

1 80 



JUNE 

cricket pure and simple — the game of your Village 
Green, in fact. Out of this grew representative 
local cricket — that is, district or county cricket 
which flourished along with local club cricket. Out 
of county cricket, which in those days was only local 
cricket glorified, sprang exhibition or spectacular or 
gladiatorial cricket, which lived side by side with, 
but distinct from, the other. Finally, exhibition and 
county cricket merged and became one. And that is 
where we are now." 

" Does he explain how exhibition and county 
cricket came, as he puts it, to be merged into one ? " 

*' Yes. The introduction of spectacular cricket (he 
says) changed the basis of county cricket consider- 
ably. For many years the exhibition elevens and 
the counties played side by side ; but gradually the 
former died out, and the new elements they had 
introduced into the game were absorbed into county 
cricket. The process was gradual, but in the end 
complete. The old county clubs and the new ones 
that from time to time sprang up added the exhibi- 
tion side of cricket to the old local basis. The 
county clubs were no longer merely glorified local 
clubs, but in addition business concerns. They 
provided popular amusement and good cricket ; 
in fact, they became what they are now — local in 
name, and partly local in reality, but also run upon 
exhibition or spectacular lines." 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



"A truly British compromise! Good business at 
the bottom of it, and a touch of local sentiment by 
way of varnish. For of course the final excuse for 
calling an eleven after Loamshire (let us say), and 
for any pride a Loamshire man may take in its 
doings, is that its members have been bred and 
trained in Loamshire. But, because any such 
limitation would sorely affect the gate-money, we 
import players from Australia or Timbuctoo, stick 
a Loamshire cap with the county arms on the head 
of each, and confidently expect our public to swallow 
the fiction and provide the local enthusiasm un- 
dismayed." 

" My dear Verinder, if you propose to preach rank 
Chauvinism, I have done. But I don't believe you 
are in earnest." 

*' In a sense, I am not. My argument would 
exclude Ranjitsinhji himself from all matches but 
a few unimportant ones. I vote for Greater Britain, 
as you know : and in any case my best arguments 
would go down before the sheer delight of watching 
him at the wicket. Let the territorial fiction stand, 
by all means. Nay, let us value it as the one relic 
of genuine county cricket. It is the other side of 
the business that I quarrel with." 

*' Be good enough to define the quarrel." 

" Why, then, I quarrel with the spectacular side 
of the New Cricket ; which, when you come to look 

182 



JUNE 

into it, is the gate-money side. How does Ranjit- 
sinhji defend it ? " 

*' Let me see. ' Its justification is the pleasure it 
provides for large numbers of the public' " 

*' Quite so : the bricklayer and the stockbroker by 
the ropes, and the cynical lawyer in the pavilion ! 
But I prefer to consider the interests of the game." 

" ' From a purely cricket point of view,' he goes 
on, ' not much can be said against it.' " 

'' Let us inquire into that. The New Cricket is 
a business concern : it caters for the bricklayer, the 
stockbroker, and the whole crowd of spectators. Its 
prosperity depends on the attraction it offers them. 
To attract them it must provide first-class players, 
and the county that cannot breed first-class players 
is forced to hire them. This is costly; but again 
the cash comes out of the spectators' pockets, in 
subscriptions and gate-money. Now are you going 
to tell me that those who pay the piper will refrain 
from calling the tune ? Most certainly they will not. 
More and more frequently in newspaper reports 
of cricket-matches you find discussions of what is 
* due to the public' If stumps, for some reason or 
other, are drawn early, it is hinted that the spectators 
have a grievance; a captain's orders are canvassed 
and challenged, and so is the choice of his team ; a 
dispute between a club and its servants becomes an 
affair of the streets, and is taken up by the press, with 

183 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



threats and counter-threats. In short, the interest 
of the game and the interest of the crowd may not 
be identical ; and whereas a captain used to consider 
only the interest of the game, he is now obliged to 
consider both. Does Ranjitsinhji point this out ? " 

"He seems, at any rate, to admit it; for I find 
this on page 232, in his chapter upon * Captaincy': — 

" ' The duties of a captain vary somewhat according to 
the kind of match in which his side is engaged, and to 
the kind of club which has elected him. To begin with, 
first-class cricket, including representative M.C.C., county 
and university matches, is quite different from any other 
— partly because the results are universally regarded as 
more important, partly because certain obligations towards 
the spectators have to be taken into consideration. The last 
point applies equally to any matcli which people pay to come 
to see. . . . With regard to gate-money matches. The 
captains of the two sides engaged are, during the match,, 
responsible for everything in connection with it. They 
are under an obligation to the public to see that the match is 
played in such a way as the public has a reasonable right to 
expect.' " 

"And pray," demanded Verinder, "what are these 
* obligations towards the spectators,' and ' reasonable 
rights ' of the public ? " 

" Well, I suppose the public can reasonably de- 
mand punctuality in starting play; a moderate 
interval for luncheon and between innings; and 
that stumps shall not be drawn, nor the match 



JUNE 

abandoned, before the time arranged, unless circum- 
stances make it absolutely necessary." 

''And who is to be judge of these circumstances?" 

"The captain, I suppose." 

'' In theory, yes ; but he has to satisfy the crowd. 
It is the crowd's ' reasonable right ' to be satisfied ; 
and by virtue of it the crowd becomes the final 
judge. It allows the captain to decide, but will 
barrack him if displeased with his decision. More- 
over, you have given me examples to illustrate this 
'reasonable right,' but you have not defined it- Now 
I want to know precisely how far it extends, and 
where it ceases. Does Ranjitsinhji provide this 
definition ? " 

" No," said I ; " I cannot find that he does." 

" To be sure he does not ; and for the simple 
reason that these claims on the side of the public 
are growing year by year. Already no one can say 
how miich they cover, and assuredly no one can 
say where they are likely to stop. You observe that 
our author includes even University matches under 
the head of exhibition cricket, in which obligations 
towards the spectators have to be taken into accounts 
You remember the scene at Lord's in 1893 when 
Wells purposely bowled no-balls ; and again in i8g6 
when Shine bowled two no-balls to the boundary and 
then a ball which went for four byes, the object in 
each case being to deprive Oxford of the follow-on» 

185 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



This policy was hotly discussed ; and luckily the 
discussion spent itself on the question whether play 
could be at the same time within the laws and clean 
contrary to the ethics of cricket. But there was 
also a deal of talk about what was ' due to the 
public ' ; talk which would have been altogether 
wide of the mark in the old days, when Oxford and 
Cambridge met to play a mere friendly match and 
the result concerned them alone." 

"And is this," I asked, "the sum of your 
indictment ? " 

" Yes, I think that is all. And surely it is 
enough." 

"Then, as I make out, your chief objections to 
spectacular cricket are two. You hold that it gives 
vast numbers of people a false idea that they are 
joining in a sport when in truth they are doing no 
more than look on. And you contend that as the 
whole institution resolves itself more and more into 
a paid exhibition, the spectators will tend more and 
more to direct the development of the game ; 
whereas cricket in your opinion should be unin- 
fluenced by those who are outside the ropes ? " 

"That is my case." 

"And I think, my dear Verinder, it is a strong 
one. But there is just one little point which you 
do not appear to have considered. And I was 
coming to it just now — or rather Prince Ranjitsinhji 



1 86 



JUNE 

was coming to it — when you interrupted us. ' From 
a purely cricket point of view,' he was saying, ' not 
much can be said against exhibition cricket.' And 
in the next sentence he goes on : 'At any rate it 
promotes skill in the game and keeps up the 
standard of excellence.' " 

"To be sure it does that." 

"And cricket is played by the best players to-day 
with more skill than it was by the best players of 
twenty or forty years ago ? " 

'' Yes, I believe that ; in spite of all we hear 
about the great Alfred Mynn and other bygone 
heroes." 

"Come then," said I, "tell me. Is Cricket an art ? " 

" Decidedly it is." 

"Then Cricket, like other arts, should aim at 
perfection ? " 

" I suppose so." 

"And that will be the highest aim of Cricket — 
its own perfection ? And its true lovers should 
welcome whatever helps to make it perfect ? " 

" I see what you are driving at," said he. " But 
Cricket is a social art, and must be judged by the 
good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive, 
make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the 
gardeners treat a fine chrysanthemum, nipping off a 
hundred buds to feed and develop a single perfect 
bloom." 

187 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



"True: we must consider it also as a social art. 
But, my dear fellow, are you not exaggerating the 
destruction necessary to produce the perfect bloom ? 
You talk of the crowd at Lord's or the Oval as if all 
these thousands were diverted from honest practice 
of the game to the ignoble occupation of looking on ; 
whereas two out of three of them, were this spec- 
tacle not provided, would far more likely be attending 
a horse-race, or betting in clubs and public-houses. 
The bricklayer, the stockbroker, the archdeacon, 
by going to see Lockwood bowl, depopulate no 
village green. You judge these persons by yourself, 
and tell yourself reproachfully that but for this 
attraction you^ John Verinder, would be creditably 
perspiring at a practice-net in Tooting or Dulwich ; 
whereas, the truth is " 

" Why are you hesitating ? " 

" Because it is not a very pleasant thing to say- 
But the truth is, your heart and your conscience in 
this matter of athletics are a little younger than 
your body." 

" You mean that I am getting on for middle age." 

" I mean that, though you talk of it, you will 
never subscribe to that suburban club. You will 
marry ; you will be made a judge : you will attend 
cricket matches, and watch from the pavilion while 
your son takes block for his first score against the 
M.C.C. 



JUNE 

" And when with envy Time transported, 
Shall think to rob us of our joys, 
I, with my girls (if I ever have any), will sit on the 
top of a drag (if I ever acquire one) and teach 
them at what to applaud, 
While you go a-batting with your boys." 

Verinder pulled a wry face, and the Boy smacked 
him on the back and exhorted him to " buck up." 

''And the round v^orld will go on as before, and 
the sun will patrol Her Majesty's dominions, and 
still where the Union Jack floats he will pass the 
wickets pitched and white-flannelled Britons playing 
for all they are worth, while men of subject races 
keep the score-sheet. And still when he arrives at 
this island he will look down on green closes and 
approve what we all allow to be one of the most 
absolutely gracious sights on earth — the ordered 
and moving regiments of schoolboys at cricket. 
Grayson, reach round to that shelf against which 
your chair is tilted ; take down poor Lefroy's poems, 
and read us that sonnet of his, ' The Bowler.' " 

Grayson found the book and the place, and 
read : — 

" Two minutes' rest till the next man goes in ! 
The tired arms lie with every sinew slack 
On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back, 
And elbows apt to make the leather spin 
Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin, — 

189 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



In knavish hands a most unkindly knack ; 
But no guile shelters under the boy's black 
Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin. 
Two minutes only ! Conscious of a name, 
The new man plants his weapon with profound 
Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare. 
Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game : 
The flung ball takes one maddening, tortuous bound,. 
And the mid-stump three somersaults in air ! " 

"Topping! " the Boy ejaculated. "Who wrote it? " 
" His name was Lefroy. He died young. He left 
Oxford a few 3^ears before we went up. And I 
think," continued Verinder, musing, "that I, who 
detest making acquaintances, would give at this 
moment a considerable sum to have known him. 
Well," he continued, turning to me and puffing at 
his pipe, "so you warn Grayson and me that we 
must prepare to relinquish these and all the other 
delights sung by Lefroy and Norman Gale and that 
other poet — anonymous, but you know the man — in 
his incomparable parody of Whitman : ' the perfect 
feel of a fourer ' — 

" ' The thousand melodious cracks, delicious cracks^ 
the responsive echoes of my comrades and the hundred 
thence resulting runs, passionately yearned for, never, 
never again to be forgotten. 

" ' Overhead meanwhile the splendid silent sun, 
blending all, fusing all, bathing all in floods of soft 
ecstatic perspiration.' 

190 



JUNE 

— to all this we must say good-bye. And what do 
you offer us in exchange ? " 

" Merely the old consolation that life is short, art 
is long ; that while you grow old, cricket in other 
hands will be working out its perfection, and your 
son, when you have one, will start with higher ideals 
than you ever dreamed of." 

"And this perfection — -will it ever be attained?" 
*' I dare say never. For perhaps we may say after 
Plato, and without irreverence, that the pattern of 
perfect cricket is laid up somewhere in the skies, and 
out of man's reach. But between it and ordinary 
cricket we may set up a copy of perfection, as close 
as man can make it, and, by little and little, closer 
every year. This copy will be preserved, and cared 
for, and advanced, by those professional cricketers 
against whom the unthinking have so much to say ; 
by these and by the few amateurs who, as time goes 
on, will be found able to bear the strain. For the 
search after perfection is no light one, and will admit 
of no half-hearted service. I say nothing here of 
material rewards, beyond reminding you that your 
professional cricketer is poorly paid in comparison 
with an inferior singer of the music-halls, although 
he gives twice as much pleasure as your lion comique, 
and of a more innocent kind. But he does more 
than this. He feeds and guards the flame of art ; 
and when his joints are stiff and his vogue is past, 

191 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



he goes down as groundman and instructor to a 
public school, and imparts to a young generation 
what knowledge he can of the high mysteries whose 
servant he has been : quite like the philosopher in 
the Republic " 

'' Steady on ! " interposed Grayson. " How on 
earth will the Boy stand up to Briggs' bowling 
if you put these notions in his head? He'll be 
awe-struck, and begin to fidget with his right foot." 

" Oh, fire ahead ! " said that cheerful youth. He 
had possessed himself of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book 
and coiled himself comfortably into a wicker chair. 
— ** You 're only rotting, I know. And you 've 
passed over the most important sentence in the 
whole book. Listen to this : * There are very few 
newspaper readers who do not turn to the cricket 
column first when the morning journal comes ; who 
do not buy a halfpenny evening paper to find out 
how many runs W.G. or Bobby Abel has made.' 
That 's the long and short of the matter. Verinder, 
which do you read first in your morning paper — the 
Foreign Intelligence or the Cricket News ? " 



192 



JUNE 



THE SECOND DIALOGUE. 
1905. 

A few days ago — to be precise, on Saturday the 
24th of this month — my friend Verinder reminded 
me of the long-past conversation. We had met by 
appointment at Paddington to travel down to 
Windsor for the second day of the Eton and 
Winchester match, taking with us (or rather, being 
taken by) a youngster whom we call The Infant. 
The Infant, who talks little save in the bosom of 
his family, and even so preserves beneath his talk 
that fine reticence of judgment which most adorns 
the age of fifteen, not unfrequently surprises me 
by his experiments in the art of living. On this 
occasion, while I was engaged in the booking-office 
and Verinder in scanning the shelves of Messrs. 
Smith's bookstall, he had found our train, chosen 
our compartment, and laid out twopence in four 
halfpenny papers, which he spread on the cushions 
by way of reserving our seats. 

''But why four," I asked, "seeing there are but 
three of us ? " 

"It will give us more room," he answered simply. 

He had hoped, I doubt not, by this devise to 
retain the whole compartment ; but the hope was 

193 
14 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



soon and abruptly frustrated by a tall, well-dressed 
and pompous man who came striding down the 
platform while we idled by the door, and thrusting 
past us almost before we could give way, entered 
the compartment, dropped into a corner seat, tossed 
his copy of The Times on to the seat opposite, took 
off his top-hat, examined it, replaced it when 
satisfied of its shine, drew out a spare handkerchief, 
opened it, flicked a few specks of dust from his^ 
patent-leather boots, looked up while reaching across 
for The Times, recognised me with a nod and a 
'* Good morning ! " and buried himself in his paper. 
I on my part, almost before glancing at his face, 
had recognised him by his manner for a personage 
next to whom it has been my lot to sit at one or two 
public banquets. I will call him Sir John Crang. 
He is a K.C.M.G., a Colonial by birth and breeding,, 
a Member of Parliament, and a person ot the 
sort we treat in these days with consideration. 
Since the second year of Jubilee (in which he was 
knighted) he and his kind have found themselves at 
ease in Sion, and of his kind he has been perhaps 
the most fortunate. In his public speeches he alludes 
to himself humorously as a hustler. He has married 
a wealthy lady, in every other respect too good for 
him, entertains largely at dinners which should be 
private but are reported in the press, and advocates 
conscription for the youth of Great Britain. Upon 



194 



JUNE 

conscription for his native colony, as upon any other 
of its duties towards Imperial defence, if you ques- 
tion him, you will find him sonorously evasive. 

The Infant, accustomed to surprise at the extent 
of my acquaintance, gazed at him politely for a 
moment as we took our seats and the train moved 
out of the station. I noted a veiled disapproval in 
his eye as he picked up a newspaper, and at that 
moment Verinder, who had picked up another, 
emitted a noise not unlike the snort of the engine 
as it gathered speed. I glanced at him in some 
apprehension. Verinder's bearing toward strangers 
is apt to be brutal, and by an instinct acquired as his 
companion on old reading-parties I was prepared to 
be apologetic. 

His ill-humour, however, had nothing to do with 
Sir John Crang. He had laid the newspaper across 
his knee, and was pointing to it with a scornful fore- 
finger. 

*' Look here," he said. " Do you remember a talk 
we had some years ago — you and I and Grayson ? 

It started in D 's shop one afternoon after a 

Kent and Middlesex match. You ought to remember, 
for I picked up the Pall Mall Magazine a month later 
and found you had made copy out of it." 

"To be sure," said L *' We discussed cricket, 
and a number of reputations then well known, about 
which the public troubles itself no longer. Let us 

195 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



try their names upon The Infant here, and discover 
with how many of them he is acquainted." 

"We discussed," said Verinder, "the vulgarisation 
of cricket. You made me say some hard things 
about it, but be hanged to me if anything I prophe- 
sied then came near to this ! Listen — 

" ' I suppose I may say that, after some luck at starting, 
I played a pretty good innings : but a total of 240 is 
poor enough for first knock on such a wicket as Hove, 
and, as things stand, the omens are against us. How- 
ever, as I write this wire the clouds are gathering, and 
there 's no denying that a downfall during the night may 
help our chances.' " 

" What on earth are you reading ? " I asked. 
" Stay a moment. Here 's another — 

" * With Jones's wicket down, the opposition declared, 
somewhat to the annoyance of the crowd : and indeed, 
with Robinson set and playing the prettiest strokes all 
around the wicket, I must admit that they voiced a 
natural disappointment. They had paid their money, 
and, after the long period of stonewalling which preceded 
the tea interval, a crowded hour of glorious life would 
have been exhilarating, and perhaps was no more than 
their due. Dickson, however, took his barracking good- 
humouredly. Towards the end Jones had twice appealed 
against the light.' " 

" I suppose," said I, " that is how cricket strikes 
the Yellow Press. Who are the reporters ? " 

196 



JUNE 

**The reporters are the captains of two county 
teams — two first-class county teams ; and they are 
writing of a match actually in progress at this 
moment. Observe A.'s fine sense of loyalty to a 
captain's duty in his published opinion that his side 
is in a bad way. Remark his chivalrous hope for 
a sodden wicket to-morrow." 

" It is pretty dirty," I agreed. 

Verinder snorted. " I once tried to kill a man 
at mid -on for wearing a pink shirt. But these 
fellows ! They ought to wear yellow flannels." 

" What, by the way, is the tea interval ? " I 
asked. 

" It is an interval," answered Verinder seriously, 
"in which the opposing captains adjourn to the 
post office and send telegrams about themselves 
and one another." 

" Excuse me," put in Sir John Crang, looking up 
from his Times and addressing me, " but I quite 
agree with what you and your friend are saying. 
Interest in the Australian tour, for instance, I can 
understand ; it promotes good feeling, and anything 
that draws closer the bonds of interest between our« 
selves and the colonies is an imperial asset." 

" Good Lord ! " murmured Verinder. 

Sir John fortunately did not hear him. " But I 
agree with you," he continued, "in condemning 
this popular craze for cricket per se, which is after 

197 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



all but a game with a ball and some sticks. I will 
not go the length of our imperial poet and dub its 
votaries 'flannelled fools.' That was poetical license, 
eh ? though pardonable under the circumstances. 
But, as he has said elsewhere, * How little they know 
of England who only England know.' " (At this 
point I reached out a foot and trod hard on 
Verinder's toe.) "And to the broader outlook — I 
speak as a pretty wide traveller — this insular 
absorption in a mere game is bewildering." 

" Infant ! " said Verinder suddenly, still under 
repression of my foot, "What are you reading?" 

The Infant looked up sweetly, withdrawing him- 
self from his paper, however, by an effort. 

" There 's a Johnny here who tells you how 
Bosanquet bowls with what he calls his ' over-spin.' 
He has a whole column about it with figures, just 
like Euclid ; and the funny thing is, Bosanquet 
writes just after to say that the Johnny knows 
nothing about it." 

"Abandoned child," commanded Verinder, "pass 
me the paper. You are within measurable distance 
of studying cricket for its own sake, and will come 
to a bad end." 

Within twenty seconds he and The Infant were 
intently studying the diagrams, which Verinder 
demonstrated to be absurd, while Sir John, a little 
huffed by his manner, favoured me with a vision 



198 



JUNE 

of England as she should be, with her ploughshares 
beaten into Morris Tubes. 

In the midst of this discourse Verinder looked 
up. 

" Let us not despair of cricket," says he. " She 
has her victories, but as yet no prizes to be presented 
with public speeches." 

" Curious fellow that friend of yours," said Sir 
John, as he took leave of me on Windsor platform. 
** Yes, yes, I saw how you humoured him : but why 
should he object to a man's playing cricket in a 
pink shirt ? " 

He went on his way toward the Castle, while we 
turned our faces for Agar's Plough and the best game 
in the world. 



199 



Jul 



y 



OUR Parliamentary Candidate — or Prospective 
Candidate, as we cautiously call him — has been 
visiting us, and invited me to sit on the platform 
and give the speeches my moral support. I like 
our candidate, w^ho is young, ardent, good-natured, 
and keeps his temper v^hen he is heckled; seems^ 
indeed, to enjoy being heckled, and conciliates his 
opponents by that bright pugnacity which a true 
Briton loves better than anything else in politics* 
I appreciate, too, the compliment he pays me. 
But I wish he would not choose to put his ardour 
in competition with Sirius and the dog-days; and 
I heartily wish he had not brought down Mr. 
Blank, M.P., to address us in his support. 

Mr. Blank and I have political opinions which 
pass, for convenience, under a common label. Yet 
there are few men in England whose attitude of 
mind towards his alleged principles I more cordially 
loathe. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I 
think him a hypocrite. But he has chosen the side 



JULY 

which is mine, and I cannot prevent his saying a 
hundred things which I believe. 

We will suppose that Mr. Blank is a far honester 
fellow than I am able to think him. Still, and at 
the best, he is a sort of composite photograph of 
your average Member of Parliament — the type of 
man to whom Great Britain commits the direction 
of her affairs and, by consequence, her well-doing 
and her well-being and her honour. Liberal or 
Conservative, are not the features pretty much the 
same ? a solid man, well past fifty, who has spent 
the prime of his life in business and withdrawn 
from it with a good reputation and a credit balance 
equally satisfactory to himself and his bankers. Or 
it may be that he has not actually retired but has 
turned to politics to fill up those leisure hours which 
are the reward or vexation (as he chooses to look at 
them) of a prosperous man of business ; for, as 
Bagehot pointed out, the life of a man of business 
who employs his own capital, and employs it nearly 
always in the same way, is by no means fully 
employed. " If such a man is very busy, it is a 
sign of something wrong. Either he is working at 
detail, which subordinates would do better, or he 
is engaged in too many speculations." In conse- 
quence our commerce abounds with men of great 
business ability and experience who, being short of 
occupation, are glad enough to fill up their time 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



with work in Parliament, as well as proud to write 
M.P. after their names. For my part I can think 
of nothing better calculated to reassure anyone 
whose dreams are haunted by apprehensions of 
wild-cat legislative schemes, or the imminence of a 
Radical millennium, than five minutes' contempla- 
tion of our champions of progress as they recline 
together, dignified and whiskered and bland, upon 
the benches of St. Stephen's. 

But let us proceed with our portrait, which I 
vow is a most pleasing one. Our typical legislator 
is of decent birth, or at least hopeful of acquiring 
what he rightly protests to be but ''the guinea 
stamp" by judiciously munificent contributions to 
his party's purse ; honest and scrupulous in dealing ; 
neither so honest nor so scrupulous in thinking; 
addicted to phrases and a trifle too impatient of 
their meaning, yet of proved carefulness in drawing 
the line between phrase and practice ; a first-rate 
committeeman (and only those who have sat long 
in committee can sound the depths of this praise) ; 
locally admired ; with much bonhomie of manner, 
backed by a reputation for standing no nonsense ; 
good-tempered, honestly anxious to reconcile con- 
flicting interests and do the best for the unconflicting 
ones of himself and his country; but above all a 
man who knows where to stop. I vow (I repeat^ 
he makes a dignified and amiable figure. One can 



JULY 

easily understand why people like to be represented 
by such a man. It gives a feeling of security — a 
somewhat illusory one, I believe; and security is 
the first instinct of a state. One can understand 
why the exhortations, dehortations, precepts, and 
instructions of parents, preachers, schoolmasters 
tend explicitly and implicitly to the reproduction 
of this admired bloom. 

Yet one may whisper that it has — shall we say ? — 
its failings ; and its failings are just those which are 
least to be commended to the emulation of youth. 
It is, for instance, constitutionally timid. Violent 
action of any kind will stampede it in a panic, and, 
like the Countess in Evan Harrington, it " does not 
ruffle well." It betrays (I think) ill-breeding in its 
disproportionate terror whenever an anarchist bomb 
explodes, and in the ferocity of its terror it can be 
crueller than the assailant. " My good people," it 
provokes one to say, " by all means stamp out these 
dangers, but composedly, as becomes men conscious 
of their strength. Even allowing for the unscru- 
pulousness of your assailant, you have still nine 
hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of 
the odds in your favour; and so long as you 
answer the explosions of weak anarchy by cries 
suggestive of the rage of the sheep, you merely 
raise the uncomfortable suspicion that, after 
all, there must be something amiss with a 

203 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 

civilisation which counts you among its most 
expensive products." 

But in the untroubled hour of prosperity this 
weakness of breeding is scarcely less apparent. 
Our admired bloom is admired rather for not doing- 
certain things than for doing others. His precepts 
are cautious and mainly negative. He does not get 
drunk (in public at any rate), and he expends Imuch 
time and energy in preventing men from getting 
drunk. But he does not lead or heartily incite to 
noble actions, although at times — w^hen he has been 
badly frightened — he is ready to pay men handsomely 
to do them. He v^ins and loses elections on ques- 
tions of veto. He had rather inculcate the passive 
than the active virtues. He prefers temperance 
and restraint to energy and resolve. He thinks 
more of the organisation than the practice of 
charity, esteems a penny saved as three halfpence 
gained, had liefer detect an impostor than help a 
deserving man. He is apt to label all generous 
emotions as hysterical, and in this he errs ; for when 
a man calls the generous emotions hysterical he 
usually means that he would confuse them with 
hysterics if they happened to him. 

Now the passive virtues — continence, frugality, 
and the like — are desirable, but shade off into mere 
want of pluck ; while the active virtues — courage,, 
charity, clemency, cheerfulness, helpfulness — are 

204 



JULY 

ever those upon which the elect and noble souls in 
history have laid the greater stress. I frankly detest 
Blank, M.P., because I believe him to be a venal 
person, a colourable (and no doubt self- deceiving) 
imitation of the type. But, supposing him to be the 
real thing, I still think that, if you want a model for 
your son, you will do better with Sir Philip Sidney. 
If ever a man illustrated the beauty of the active 
virtues in his life and in his death, that man was 
Sidney ; but he also gave utterance in noble speech 
to his belief in them. In the Apologie for Poetrie you 
will find none of your art-for-art's-sake chatter : 
Sidney boldly takes the line that poetry helps men, 
and helps them not to well-being only, but to well- 
doing, and again helps them to well-doing not merely 
by teaching (as moral philosophy does) but by 
inciting. For an instance — 

"Who readeth ^Eneas carrying old Anchises on his 
back that wisheth not it were his fortune to perform so 
excellent an act ? " 

There speaks, anticipating Zutphen, the most perfect 
knight in our history. Again — 

" Truly I have known men that even with reading 
Amadis de GauU (which, God knoweth, wanteth much of 
a perfect poesy) have found their hearts moved to the 
exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage " — 

all active virtues be it noted. " We are not damned 

205 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



for doing wrong," writes Stevenson, " but for not 
doing right. Christ will never hear of negative 
morality : Thou shalt was ever His word, with 
which He superseded Thou shalt not. To make our 
morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the 
imagination and to introduce into our judgments of 
our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. ... In 
order that a man may be kind and honest it may be 
needful that he should become a total abstainer : let 
him become so then, and the next day let him forget 
the circumstance. Trying to be kind and honest 
will require all his thoughts," Yet how many times 
a day will we say " don't " to our children for once 
that we say *'do"? But here I seem to be within 
reasonable distance of discussing original sin, and 
so I return to Mr. Blank. 



I do not like Mr. Blank ; and I disHked his speech 
the other night so heartily that it drove me to sit 
down when I reached home and put my reflections 
into verse ; into a form of verse, moreover, which 
(I was scornfully aware) Mr. Blank would understand 
as little as the matter of it. He would think them 
both impractical. Heaven help the creature ! 



206 



JULY 



CHANT ROYAL OF HIGH VIRTUE. 

Who lives in suit of armour pent, 

And hides himself behind a wall, 
For him is not the great event. 

The garland, nor the Capitol. 
And is God's guerdon less than they ? 
Nay, moral man, I tell thee Nay : 
Nor shall the flaming forts be won 
By sneaking negatives alone. 

By Lenten fast or Ramazan, 
But by the challenge proudly thrown — 

Virtue is that beseems a Man! 

God, in His Palace resident 

Of Bliss, beheld our sinful ball. 
And charged His own Son innocent 

Us to redeem from Adam's fall. 
— "Yet must it be that men Thee slay." 
— " Yea, tho' it must must I obey," 
Said Christ, — and came. His royal Son, 
To die, and dying to atone 

For harlot and for publican. 
Read on that rood He died upon — 

Virtue is that beseems a Man ! 

And by that rood where He was bent 
I saw the world's great captains all 

Go riding to the tournament — 
Cyrus the Great and Hannibal, 

207 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Caesar of Rome and Attila, 
Lord Charlemagne with his array, 
Lord Alisaundre of Macedon — 
With flaming lance and habergeon 

They passed, and to the rataplan 
Of drums gave salutation — 

Virtue is that beseems a Man ! 

Had tall Achilles lounged in tent 

For aye, and Xanthus neigh'd in stall, 
The towers of Troy had ne'er been shent, 

Nor stay'd the dance in Priam's hall. 
Bend o'er thy book till thou be grey, 
Read, mark, perpend, digest, survey — 
Instruct thee deep as Solomon — 
One only chapter thou shalt con. 

One lesson learn, one sentence scan, 
One title and one colophon — 

Virtue is that beseems a Man ! 

High Virtue's best is eloquent 

With spur and not with martingall : 
Sufficeth not thou'rt continent : 

Be courteous, brave, and liberal. 
God fashion'd thee of chosen clay 
For service, nor did ever say 
^' Deny thee this," "Abstain from yon," 
Save to inure thee, thew and bone. 

To be confirmed of the clan 
That made immortal Marathon — 

Virtue is that beseems a Man! 

208 



JULY 



Envoy. 

Young Knight, the lists are set to-day : 
Hereafter shall be long to pray 
In sepulture with hands of stone. 
Ride, then ! outride the bugle blown ! 

And gaily dinging down the van 
Charge with a cheer — Set on ! Set on ! 

Virtue is that beseems a Man ! 



A friend to whom I showed these verses remarked 
that Mr. Blank was indeed a person who fed his 
soul upon negatives ; but that I possibly did 
him some injustice in charging so much of this 
to timidity, whereas the scent lay rather in the 
gusto with which he judged his fellow -men. 
" And, by the way," said he, *' is there not some 
gusto in the scorn with which you are judging 
Mr. Blank at this moment?" "Do you remem- 
ber," I answered, "how that man, after voting for 
war the other day, went straight off to a meeting 
of the Peace Society and put up a florid appeal 
to the Prince of Peace for a time when wars 
should be no more ? Let him be, however : I do 
wrong to lose my temper with him. But on this 
matter of national timidity I have something to 
say. . . ." 

I have been reading John Holland's two Discourses 
of the Navy, written in 1638 and 1659, and published 

209 
15 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



the other day by the Navy Records Society. The 
object of Mr. Holland's discourses was to reform the 
Navy, purge it of abuses, and strengthen it for the 
defence of this realm ; and I have been curious to 
compare his methods with those of our own Navy 
League, which has been making such a noise for 
ten years or so. The first thing I observe is the 
attitude of mind in which he approaches his 
subject : — 

" If either the honour of a nation, commerce or trust 
with all nations, peace at home, grounded upon our 
enemies' fear or love of us abroad, and attended with 
plenty of all things necessary either for the preservation 
of the public weal or thy private welfare, be things 
worthy thy esteem (though it may be beyond thy shoal 
conceit) then next to God and thy King give thy thanks 
for the same to the Navy. As for honour, who knows 
not (that knows anything) that in all records of late 
times of actions, chronicled to the everlasting fame and 
renown of this nation, still the naval part is the thread 
that runs through the whole wooft, the burden of the 
song, the scope of the text ? . . ." 

He proceeds to enumerate some particular com- 
mercial advantages due to our mastery of the sea, 
and sums up in these words : — 

" Suffice it thus far, nothing under God, who doth 
all, hath brought so much, so great commerce to this 
Kingdom as the rightly noble employments of our navy ; 



JULY 

a whee], if truly turned, that sets to work all Christendom 
by its motion ; a mill, if well extended, that in a sweet 
yet sovereign composure contracts the grist of all nations 
to its own dominions, and requires only the tribute of its 
own people, not for, but towards, its maintenance." 

The eloquence may be turgid, but the attitude is 
dignified. The man does not scold ; does not 
terrify. He lays his stress on the benefits of a 
strong navy— on the renown it has won for England 
in the past. He assumes his readers to be intelligent 
men, amenable to advice which will help them to 
perpetuate this renown and secure these benefits in 
time to come. His exordium over, he settles down 
to an exposition of the abuses which are impairing 
our naval efficiency, and suggests reforms, some 
wisely conceived, others not so wisely, with the 
business-like, confident air of one who knows what 
he is talking about. 

Now I open the prospectus in which our Navy 
League started out to make everyone's flesh creep, 
and come plump upon language of this sort :— 

" It IS the close, let us suppose, of our second month 
of war. The fleet has been neglected, and has been 
overwhelmed, unready and unprepared. We have been 
beaten twice at sea, and our enemies have established 
no accidental superiority, but a permanent and over- 
whelming one. The telegraph cables have been severed, 
one and all ; these islands are in darkness " 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



for presumably the gas-mains, as well as the cables, 
have been '' severed " (imposing word ! ) — 

— *' under a heavy cloud of woe. Invasion is in the air ; 
our armies are mustering in the south. We are cut off 
from the world, and can only fitfully perceive what is 
happening. Our liners have been captured or sunk on 
the high seas ; oar ocean tramps are in our enemies' 
hands ; British trade is dead, killed by the wholesale 
ravages of the hostile cruisers. Our ports are insulted 
or held up to ransom ; when news reaches us from India 
it is to the effect that the enemy is before our troops, a 
native insurrection behind. Malta has fallen, and our 
outlying positions are passing from our hands. Food is 
contraband, and may not be imported. Amid the jeers 
of Europe ' the nation of shopkeepers ' is writhing in 
its death agony." 

Pretty, is it not ? But let us have just a little 
more. 

" COMMERCIAL COLLAPSE. 

"And what of the internal, of the social position? 
Consols have fallen to nearly 30 ; our vast investments 
in India have been lost ; trade no longer exists. . . . 
The railways have no traffic to carry. . . . Banks and 
companies are failing daily. . . The East End of London 
is clamouring for bread and peace at any price. If we 
fall, we fall for ever. . . . The working man has to 
choose whether he will have lighter taxation for the 
moment, starvation and irretrievable ruin for the 
future ..." 



JULY 

— and so on, till Z stands for Zero, or nothing at alL 
Or, as the late Mr. Lear preferred to write : — 

*' Z said, ' Here is a box of Zinc. Get in, my little 

master ! 
We '11 shut you up : we '11 nail you down : we will, my 

little master ! 
We think we 've all heard quite enough of this your 

sad disaster ! ' " 

To speak as seriously as may be, the language is 
no longer hortatory, like Holland's, but minatory^ 
even comminatory. It is (as its author would not 
deny) the language of panic deliberately employed, 
a calculated attempt to strengthen the maUriel of 
the navy at the cost of Englishmen's fears. Now 
let me define my feeling towards the Navy League^ 
As an ordinary British citizen, I must heartily 
approve its aim of strengthening the navy and 
keeping it efficient. As an ordinary reasonable 
man, I must admit that its efforts, if rightly 
directed, may be of great national service. But 
language such as I have quoted must (so far as it is 
not merely contemptible) be merely demoralising,, 
and anyone who works on the fears of a nation — 
and especially of a nation which declines conscription 
and its one undoubted advantage of teaching men 
what war means — does a harm which is none the 
less wicked for being incalculable. These Navy 

213 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Leaguers cry incessantly for more material strength. 
They tell us that in material strength we should at 
least be equal to any two other countries. A few 
months pass, and then, their appetite growing with 
the terror it feeds upon, they insist that we must be 
equal to any three other countries. Also "it does 
not appear," they sagely remark, ''that Nelson and 
his contemporaries left any record as to what the 
proportion of the blockading should bear (sic) to 
one blockaded" — a curious omission of Nelson's, 
to be sure ! He may perhaps have held that it 
depended on the quality of the antagonists. 

To this a few ordinary stupid Britons like myself 
have always answered that no amount of materiel 
can ever replace morale; and that all such panic- 
making is a mischevious attempt to lower the 'breed, 
and the more mischievous because its mischief may 
for a while be imperceptible. We can see our war- 
ships growing : we cannot see the stamina decaying ; 
yet it is our stamina on which we must rely finally 
in the fatal hour of trial. We said this, and we 
were laughed at ; insulted as unpatriotic — a word of 
which one may say in kindness that it would not 
so readily leap to the lips of professional patriots 
if they were able to understand what it means and, 
by consequence, how much it hurts. 

Yes, and behold, along comes Admiral Togo, and 
at one stroke proves that we were simply, absolutely 



214 



JULY 

and henceforward incontestably right ! What were 
our little three-power experts doing on the morrow 
of Togo's victory ? They are making irrelevant 
noises in the halfpenny press, explaining how 
Admiral Togo did it with an inferior force, and in a 
fashion that belies all their axioms. But I turn to 
The Times and I read : — 

" The event shows that mere material equality is but 
as dust in the balance when weighed in the day of battle 
against superiority of moral equipment." 

— which, when you come to think of it, is precisely 
what Bacon meant when he wrote :— 

" Walled Townes, stored Arcenalls and Armouries, 
Goodly Races of Horse, Chariots of Warre, Elephants, 
Ordnance, Artillery and the like : all this is but a Sheep 
in a Lion's skin except the Breed and disposition of the 
People be stout and warlike. Nay, Number (it selfe) 
in Armies importeth not much where the People is of 
weake Courage : For (as Virgil saith) it never troubles 
u Wolfe how many the Sheepe be.'^ 

Do our friends of the Navy League seriously 
believe that a principle as old as humankind can 
he suddenly upset by the invention of a submarine 
or of some novelty in guns ? Even in their notions 
of what material strength means I hold them to 
be mistaken. The last resource which a nation 
ought to neglect is its financial credit. It was 

215 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Walpole's long policy of peace which made possible 
Pitt's conquests. But I hold with far stronger 
conviction that he does wickedly who trades on a 
nation's cowardice to raise money for its protection. 
An old text, my masters ! It seems a long while 
that some of us were preaching it in vain until 
Admiral Togo came along and proved it. 



I observe that a Member of Parliament for a 
West of England constituency (a better fellow than 
Mr. Blank, too) has been using one of the arguments 
with which these precious experts attacked me ; that 
because I sometimes write novels I cannot be 
supposed to think seriously on public affairs. My 
only wonder is that those who hold this cloistral 
view of the province of a man of letters consider 
him worthy to pay income-tax. 

I pass over some tempting reflections on the queer 
anomaly that this prohibition should be addressed 
(as it so often is) by writers to writers, by newspaper 
writers to men who write books, and (so far as a 
distinction can be drawn) b}'' men .who write in a 
hurry to men who write deliberately. I wish ta 
look quietly into the belief on which it rests and 
to inquire how that belief was come by. 

There certainly was a time when such a belief 
would have been laughed at as scarcely reasonable 

216 



JULY 

enough to be worth discussing. And that time, oddly 
enough, was almost conterminous with the greatest 
era of the world's literature, the greatest era of 
political discovery, and the greatest era of Empire- 
making. The men who made Athens and the men 
who made Rome would have disputed (I fear some- 
what contemptuously) the axiom on which my friend 
the West Country member builds his case. They 
held it for axiomatic that the artist and man of letters 
ought not to work in cloistral isolation, removed 
from public affairs, and indifferent to them ; that on 
the contrary they are direct servants of their State, 
and have a peculiar call to express themselves on 
matters of public moment. To convince you that 
I am not advancing any pet theory of my own let 
me present it in the words of a grave and judicious 
student, Mr. W. J. Courthope, late Professor of 
Poetry at Oxford : — 

" The idea of the State lay at the root of every Greek 
conception of art and morals. For though, in the view 
of the philosopher, the virtue of the good citizen was. 
not always necessarily identical with the virtue of the 
individual man, and though, in the city of Athens at 
all events, a large amount of life was possible to the 
individual apart from public interests, yet it is none the 
less true that the life of the individual in every Greek 
city was in reality moulded by the customary life, 
tradition and character, in one intranslatable word, by 
the ^^09 of the State. Out of this native soil grew that 

217 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



recognised, though not necessarily public, system of 
education {iroXniKij vniSeia), consisting of reading and 
writing, music and gymnastic, which Plato and Aristotle 
themselves accepted as the basis of the constitution of 
the State. But this preliminary education was only the 
threshold to a subsequent system of political training, of 
which, in Athens at least, every citizen had an oppor- 
tunity of availing himself by his right to participate in 
public affairs; so that, in the view of Pericles, politics 
themselves were an instrument of individual refinement. 

* The magistrates,' said he, in his great funeral oration, 

* who discharge public trusts, fulfil their domestic duties 
also ; the private citizen, while engaged in professional 
business, has competent knowledge of public affairs ; for 
we stand alone in regarding the man who keeps aloof 
from these latter not as harmless, but as useless. More- 
over, we always hear and pronounce on public matters 
when discussed by our leaders, or perhaps strike out 
for ourselves correct reasonings upon them ; far from 
accounting discussion an impediment to action, we 
complain only if we are not told what is to be done 
before it becomes our duty to do it.' 

" The strenuous exertion of the faculties of the indi- 
vidual in the service of the State, described in these 
eloquent words, reflects itself in the highest productions 
of Greek art and literature, and is the source of that 
^ political ' spirit which every one can detect, alike in the 
poems of Homer and the sculpture of the Parthenon, 
as the inspiring cause of the noblest efforts of imitation. 
It prevailed most strongly through the period between 
the battle of Marathon and the battle of Chaeronea, 
and has left its monuments in such plays as the Persae 

218 



JULY 

and Eumenides of ^Eschylus, the Antigone of Sophocles, 
the Clouds of Aristophanes, the History of Thucydides 
and the Orations of Demosthenes, its last embodiment 
being perhaps the famous oath of that orator on the 
souls of those who risked their lives at Marathon." — 
History of English Poetry, vol. i., c 2. 

In the most brilliant age of Greece, then, and 
of Greek art and letters, the civic spirit was the 
inspiring spirit. But as the Greek cities sank one 
by one before the Macedonian pov^er and forfeited 
their liberties, this civic spirit died for lack of 
nourishment and exercise, and literature was driven 
to feed on itself — which is about the worst thing 
that can ever happen to it, and one of the worst 
things that can happen to a nation. The old 
political education gave place to an " encyclopsedic " 
education. The language fell into the hands of 
grammarians and teachers of rhetoric, whose in- 
ventions may have a certain interest of their own, 
but — to quote Mr. Courthope again — no longer 
reflect the feelings and energies of free political life. 

Roman literature drives home the same, or a 
similar, moral. ''The greatness of Rome was as 
entirely civic in its origin as that of any Greek city, 
and, like the Greek cities, Rome in the days of her 
freedom, and while she was still fighting for the 
mastery, preserved a system of political education, 
both in the hearth and the Senate, which was suited 

219 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



to her character. Cato, the Censor, according to 
Plutarch, ' wrote histories for his son, with his own 
hand, in large characters; so that without leaving 
his father's house he might gain a knowledge of the 
illustrious actions of the ancient Romans and the 
customs of his country': and what is of importance 
to observe," adds Mr. Courthope, "is that, even after 
the introduction of Greek culture, Cato's educational 
ideal was felt to be the foundation of Roman great- 
ness by the orators and poets who adorned the golden 
age of Latin literature." The civic spirit was at 
once the motive and vitalising force of Cicero's 
eloquence, and still acts as its antiseptic. It breaks 
through the conventional forms of Virgil's Eclogues 
and Georgics, and declares itself exultantly in such 
passages as the famous eulogy — 

"Sed neque Medorum silvae, ditissima terra, 
Nee pulcher Ganges atque auro turbidus Hermus 
Laudibas Italise certent. ..." 

It closes the last Georgic on a high political note- 
Avowedly it inspires the JEneid. It permeates all 
that Horace wrote. These two poets never tire of 
calling on their countrymen to venerate the Roman 
virtues, to hold fast by the old Sabine simplicity 

and 

'' Pure religion breathing household laws." 

Again, when the mischief was done, and Rome 



JULY 

had accepted the Alexandrine model of education 
and literary culture, Juvenal reinvoked the old 
spirit in his denunciation of the hundred and more 
trivialities which the new spirit engendered. It 
was a belated, despairing echo. You cannot expect 
quite the same shout from a man who leads a 
forlorn sortie, and a man who defends a proud 
citadel while yet it is merely threatened. But, 
allowing for changed circumstances, you will find 
that Juvenal's is just the old civic spirit turned to 
fierceness by despair. And he strikes out unerringly 
enough at the ministers of Rome's decline — at the 
poets who chatter and the rhetoricians who declaim 
on merely " literary " topics ; the rich who fritter 
away life on private luxuries and the pursuit of 
trivial aims; the debased Greek with his *^ smattering 
of encyclopaedic knowledge," but no devotion to 
the city in which he only hopes to make money. 

Now is this civic spirit in literature (however 
humble its practitioners) one which England can 
easily afford to dispise ? So far as I know, it has been 
reserved for an age of newspapers to declare explicitly 
that such a spirit is merely mischievous ; that a poet 
ought to be a man of the study, isolated amid the stir 
of passing events, serenely indifferent to his country's 
fortunes, or at least withholding his gift (allowed, 
with magnificent but unconscious irony, to be 
'''divine") from that general contribution to the 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



public wisdom in which journaHsts make so brave 
a show. He may, if he have the singular luck to 
be a Laureate, be allowed to strike his lyre and sing 
of an accouchement; this being about the only event 
on which politicians and journalists have not yet 
claimed the monopoly of offering practical advice. 
But farther he may hardly go : and all because a 
silly assertion has been repeated until second-rate 
minds confuse it with an axiom. People of a 
certain class of mind seem capable of believing 
anything they see in print, provided they see it 
often. For these, the announcement that some- 
body's lung tonic possesses a peculiar virtue has 
only to be repeated at intervals along a railway 
line, and with each repetition the assurance becomes 
more convincing, until towards the journey's end 
it wears the imperativeness almost of a revealed 
truth. And yet no reasonable inducement to belief 
has been added by any one of these repetitions. 
The whole thing is a psychological trick. The 
moral impressiveness of the first placard beyond 
Westbourne Park Station depends entirely on 
whether you are travelling from London to 
Birmingham, or from Birmingham to London. 
A mind which yields itself to this illusion could 
probably, with perseverance, be convinced that pale 
pills are worth a guinea a box for pink people, were 
anyone interested in enforcing such a harmless 



JULY 

proposition : and I have no doubt that the Man in 
the Street has long since accepted the reiterated 
axiom that a poet should hold aloof from public 
affairs, having no more capacity than a child for 
understanding their drift. 

Yet, as a matter of fact, the cry is just a cant 
party trick, used by each party in its turn. Mr. 
Kipling writes "Cleared," Mr. Alfred Austin hymns 
"Jameson's Ride," and forthwith the Liberals lift 
hands and voices in horror. Mr. Watson denounces 
the Armenian massacres or the Boer War, and the 
Unionists can hardly find words to express their 
pained surprise. Mr. Swinburne inveighed against 
Irishmen, and delighted a party; inveighed against 
the Czar, and divided a whole Front Bench between 
shocked displeasure and half-humorous astonishment 
that a poet should have any opinions about Russia, 
or, having some, should find anybody to take them 
seriously. It is all cant, my friends — nothing but cant ; 
and at its base lies the old dispute between principle 
and casuistry. If politics and statecraft rest ulti- 
mately on principles of right and wrong, then a poet 
has as clear a right as any man to speak upon them : 
as clear a right now as when Tennyson lifted his 
voice on behalf of the Fleet, or Wordsworth penned 
his "Two Voices" sonnet, or Milton denounced the 
massacres at Piedmont. While this nation retains a 
conscience, its poets have a clear right and a clear 

223 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



call to be the voice of that conscience. They may 
err, of course ; they may mistake the voice of party 
for the voice of conscience: "Jameson's Ride" and 
"The Year of Shame" — one or both — may misread 
that voice. Judge them as severely as you vi^ill by 
their right ness or wrongness, and again judge them 
by their merits or defects as literature. Only do 
not forbid the poet to speak and enforce the moral 
conviction that is in him. 

If, on the other hand, politics be a mere affair of 
casuistry ; or w^orse — a mere game of opportunism in 
which he excels who hits on the cleverest expedient 
for each several crisis as it occurs ; then indeed you 
may bid the poet hush the voice of principle, and 
listen only to the sufficiently dissonant instruction 
of those specialists at the game who make play in 
Parliament and the press. If politics be indeed that 
base thing connoted by the term " drift of public 
affairs," then the axiom rests on wisdom after all. 
The poet cannot be expected to understand the 
** drift," and had better leave it to these specialists 
in drifting. 

But if you search, you will find that poetry — rare 
gift as it is, and understood by so few — has really 
been exerting an immense influence on public 
opinion all the while that we have been deluged 
with assertions of this unhappy axiom. Why, I 
dare to say that one-half of the sense of Empire 

224 



JULY 

which now dominates poHtical thought in Great 
Britain has been the creation of her poets. The 
pubHc, if it will but clear its mind of cant, is 
grateful enough for such poetry as Mr. Kipling's 
''Flag of England" and Mr. Henley's "England, 
my England " ; and gratefully recognises that the 
spirit of these songs has passed on to thousands of 
men, women, and children, who have never read a 
line of Mr. Henley's or Mr. Kipling's composition. 

As for the axiom, it is merely the complement of 
that " Art for Art's sake " chatter which died a 
dishonoured death but a short while ago, and which 
it is still one of the joys of life to have outlived. 
You will remember how loftily we were assured that 
Art had nothing to do with morality : that the 
novelist, e.g. who composed tales of human 
conduct, had no concern with ethics — that is to 
say with the principles of human conduct : that 
"Art's only business was to satisfy Art," and so 
forth. Well, it is all over now, and packed away 
in the rag-bag of out- worn paradoxes ; and we are 
left to enjoy the revived freshness of the simple 
truth that an artist exists to serve his art, and his 
art to serve men and women. 



225 
16 



August 



A S it was reported to me, the story went that one 
•^ ^ Sunday morning in August a family stood in a 
window not far from this window of mine — the 
window of an hotel coffee-room — and debated where 
to go for divine worship. They were three : father, 
mother, and daughter, arrived the night before from 
the Midlands, to spend their holiday. " The fisher- 
folk down here are very religious," said the father, 
contemplating the anchored craft — yachts, trading- 
steamers, merchantmen of various rigs and nation- 
alities — in which he supposed the native population 
to go a-fishing on week-days : for he had been told 
in the Midlands that we were fisher-folk. "Plymouth 
Brethren mostly, I suppose," said the wife : " we 
changed at Plymouth." " Bristol." "Was it 
Bristol ? Well, Plymouth was the last big town we 
stopped at : I am sure of that. And this is on 
the same coast, isn't it ? " " What are Plymouth 
Brethren ? " the daughter asked. " Oh, well, my 
dear, I expect they are very decent, earnest people. 
It won't do us any harm to attend their service, if 

226 



AUGUST 



they have one. What I say is, when you 're away 
on hohday, do as the Romans do." The father had 
been Hstening with an unprejudiced air, as who 
should say, " I am here by the seaside for rest and 
enjoyment." He called to the waiter, "What places 
of worship have you ? " The waiter with professional 
readiness hinted that he had some to suit all tastes, 
"Church of England, Wesleyan, Congregational, 

Bible Christian " " Plymouth Brethren ? " The 

waiter had never heard of them : they had not, at 
any rate, been asked for within his recollection. He 
retired crestfallen. " That 's the worst of these 
waiters," the father explained: "they get 'em down 
for the season from Lord knows where, Germany 
perhaps, and they can tell you nothing of the place." 
" But this one is not a German, and he told me last 
night he'd been here for years." "Well, the 
question is. Where w^e are to go? Here, Ethel" — 
as a second daughter entered, buttoning her gloves — 
" your mother can't make up her mind what place of 
worship to try." " Why, father, how can you ask ? 
We must go to the Church, of course — I saw it 
from the 'bus — and hear the service in the fine old 
Cornish language." 

Now, I suspect that the friend to whom I am 
indebted for this story introduced a few grace-notes 
into his report. But it is a moral story in many 
respects, and I give it for the sake of the one or two 

227 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



morals which may be drawn from it. In the first 
place, absurd as these people appear, their ignorance 
but differs by a shade or two from the knowledge of 
certain very learned people of my acquaintance. 
That is to say, they know about as much concerning 
the religion of this corner of England to-day as the 
archaeologists, for all their industry, know concerning 
the religion of Cornwall before it became subject to 
the See of Canterbury in the reign of Athelstan, 
A.D. 925-40 ; and their hypotheses were constructed 
on much the same lines. Nay, the resemblance in 
method and in the general muddle of conclusions 
obtained would have been even more striking had 
these good persons mixed up Plymouth Brethren 
(founded in 1830) with the Pilgrim Fathers who 
sailed out of Plymouth in 1620, and are already 
undergoing the process of mythopoeic conversion 
into Deucalions and Pyrrhas of the United States of 
America. Add a slight confusion of their tenets with 
those of Mormonism, or at least a disposition to lay 
stress on all discoverable points of similarity between 
Puritans and Mormons, and really you have a not 
unfair picture of the hopeless mess into which our 
researchers in the ancient religions of Cornwall have 
honestly contrived to plunge themselves and us. It 
was better in the happy old days when we all 
believed in the Druids ; when the Druids explained 
everything, and my excellent father grafted mistletoe 

228 



AUGUST 



upon his apple-trees — in vain, because nothing will 
persuade the mistletoe to grow down here. But 
nobody believes in the Druids just now : and the old 
question of the Cassiterides has never been solved to 
general satisfaction : and the Indian cowrie found in 
a barrow at Land's End, the tiny shell which raised 
such a host of romantic conjectures and inspired 
Mr. Canton to write his touching verses : — 

" What year was it that blew 

The Aryan's wicker-work canoe 
Which brought the shell to English land ? 
What prehistoric man or woman's hand, 
With what intent, consigned it to this grave — 
This barrow set in sound of the Ancient W^orld's 
last wave ? 

" Beside it in the mound 

A charmed bead of flint was found. 
Some woman surely in this place 
Covered with flowers a little baby-face, 
And laid the cowrie on the cold dead breast ; 
And, weeping,, turned for comfort to the landless 
West? 

^4 ^ * * 

"No man shall ever know. 

It happened all so long ago 
That this same childless woman may 
Have stood upon the cliffs around the bay 
And watched for tin-ships that no longer came, 
Nor knew that Carthage had gone down in Roman 
flame." 



229 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



This cowrie — are we even certain that it was Indian? 
— that it differed so unmistakably from the cowries 
discoverable by twos and threes at times on a little 
beach off which I cast anchor half a dozen times 
every summer ? I speak as a man anxious to get at 
a little plain knowledge concerning the land of his 
birth, and the researchers seem honestly unable to 
give me any that does not tumble to pieces even in 
their own hands. For — and this seems the one 
advance made — the researchers themselves are 
honest nowadays. Their results may be disappoint- 
ing, but at least they no longer bemuse themselves 
and us with the fanciful and even mystical specula- 
tions their predecessors indulged in. Take the 
case of our inscribed stones and wayside crosses. 
Cornwall is peculiarly rich in these : of crosses alone 
it possesses more than three hundred. But when 
we make inquiry into their age we find ourselves in 
almost complete fog. The merit of the modern 
inquirer (of Mr. Langdon, for instance) is that he 
acknowledges the fog, and does not pretend to guide 
us out of it by haphazard hypotheses propounded 
with pontifical gravity and assurance — whidh was 
the way of that erratic genius, the Rev. R. S. 
Hawker : — 

"Wheel-tracks in old Cornwall there were none, but 
there were strange and narrow paths across the moor- 
lands, which, the forefathers said, in their simplicity, 



230 



AUGUST 



were first traced by Angels' feet. These, in truth, were 
trodden and worn by religious men : by the Pilgrim as 
he paced his way towards his chosen and votive bourne ; 
or by the Palmer, whose listless footsteps had neither a 
fixed Kebla nor future abode. Dimly visible, by the 
darker hue of the crushed grass, these strait and narrow 
roads led the traveller along from one Hermitage to 
another Chapelry, or distant and inhabited cave ; or the 
byeways turned aside to reach some legendary spring, 
until at last, far, far away, the winding track stood still 
upon the shore, where St. Michael of the Mount rebuked 
the dragon from his throne of rock above the seething 
sea. But what was the wanderer's guide along the bleak 
unpeopled surface of the Cornish moor ? The Wayside 
Cross ! . . ." 

Very pretty, no doubt ! but, unlike the Wayside 
Cross, this kind of writing leads nowhere. We 
want Mr. Hawker's authority for what ''the fore- 
fathers said, in their simplicity " ; without that, what 
the forefathers said resembles what the soldier said 
in being inadmissible as evidence. We want Mr. 
Hawker's authority for saying that these paths ^' in 
truth, were trodden and worn by religious men." 
Nay we want his authority for saying that there 
were any paths at all ! The hypotheses of symbolism 
are even worse ; for these may lead to anything. 
Mr. Langdon was seriously told on one occasion 
that the four holes of a cross represented the four 
evangelists. ''This," says he plaintively, "it will be 

231 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



admitted, is going a little too far, as nothing else but 
four holes could be the result of a ring and cross 
combined." At Phillack, in the west of Cornwall, 
there is part of a coped stone having a rude cable 
mounting along the top of the ridge. Two sapient 
young archseologists counted the remaining notches 
of this cable, and, finding they came to thirty-two^ 
decided at once that they represented our Lord's 
age ! They were quite certam, having counted them 
twice. In fact, there seems to be nothing that 
symbolism will not prove. Do you meet with a 
pentacle ? Its five points are the fingers of Omni- 
potence. With a six-pointed star ? Then Omni- 
potence has taken an extra finger, to include the 
human nature of the Messiah : and so on. It 
reminds one of the Dilly Song : — 

" I will sing you Five, O ! " 

" What is your Five, O ? " 

" Five it is the Dilly Bird that 's never seen 

but heard, O ! " 
" I will sing you Six, O ! . . ." 

And six is " The Cherubim Watchers," or " The 
Crucifix," or '' The Cheerful Waiters," or '' The 
Ploughboys under the Bowl," or whatever local 
fancy may have hit on and made traditional. 

The modern researcher is honest and sticks to 
facts ; but there are next to no facts. And whea 

232 



AUGUST 



he comes to a tentative conclusion, he must hedge it 
about with so many "ifs," that practically he leaves, 
us in total indecision. Nothing, for instance, can 
exceed the patient industry displayed in the late 
Mr. William Copeland Borlase's Age of the Saints 
— a monograph on Early Christianity in Cornwall : 
but, in a way, no more hopeless book was ever 
penned. The author confessed it, indeed, on his 
last page. " There seems to be little ground for 
hope that we shall be ever able to gain a perfectly 
true insight into the history of the epoch with which 
we have attempted to deal, or to unravel the meshes 
of so tangled a web." He felt his task, as he put 
it, to be not unlike that of gathering up the broken 
pieces of pottery from some ancient tomb, with the 
hope of fitting them together so as to make one 
large and perfect vase, but finding during the process 
that they belong to several vessels, not one of which 
is capable of restoration as a whole, though some 
faint notion of the pristine shape of each may be 
gained from the general pattern and contour of its 
shards. All that can be gained from the materials at 
hand is a reasonable probability that Cornwall, before 
it bent its neck to the See of Canterbury, had been 
invaded by three distinct streams of missionary effort 
— from Ireland, from Wales, and from Brittany. 
But even in what order they came no man can say^ 
for certain. 



233 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



The young lady in my friend's story wished -to 
hear the service of the Church of England in " the 
fine old Cornish language." Alas ! if Edward VI. 
and his advisers had been as wise, the religious 
history of Cornwall, during two centuries at least, 
had been a happier one. It was liberal to give 
Englishmen a Liturgy in their own tongue ; but it 
was neither liberal nor conspicuously intelligent to 
impose the same upon the Cornishmen, who neither 
knew nor cared about the English language. It may 
be easy to lay too much stress upon this grievance ; 
since Cornishmen of this period had a knack of 
being " agin the government, anyway," and had 
contrived two considerable rebellions less than sixty 
years before, one because they did not see their way 
to subscribing ;f 2,500 towards fighting King James IV. 
of Scotland for protecting Perkin Warbeck, and the 
other under Perkin's own leadership. But it was at 
least a serious grievance ; and the trouble began in 
the first year of Edward VI. 's reign. The King 
began by issuing several Injunctions about religion ; 
and among them, this one : That all images found in 
churches, for divine worship or otherwise, should be 
pulled down and cast forth out of those churches; 
and that all preachers should persuade the people 
from praying to saints, or for the dead, and from the 
use of beads, ashes, processions, masses, dirges, and 
praying to God publicly in an unknown tongue. A 

234 



Mr. Body, one of the commissioners appointed to 
carry out this Injunction, was pulHng down images 
in Helston church, near the Lizard, when a priest 
stabbed him with a knife : " of which wound he 
instantly fell dead in that place. And though the 
murderer was taken and sent up to London, tried, 
found guilty of murder in Westminster Hall, and 
executed in Smithfield, yet the Cornish people 
flocked together in a tumultuous and rebellious 
manner, by the instigation of their priests in divers 
parts of the shire or county, and committed man}^ 
barbarities and outrages in the same." These 
disturbances ended in Arundel's rebellion, the purpose 
of which was to demand the restoration of the old 
Liturgy ; and, in truth, the Seven Articles under 
which they formulated this demand must have 
seemed very moderate indeed to their conservative 
minds. The rebellion failed, of course, after a five 
weeks' siege of Exeter; and was bloodily revenged, 
with something of the savage humour displayed by 
Jeffreys in punishing a later Western rebellion. 
This part of the business was committed to Sir 
Anthony {alias William) Kingston, Knight, a Glou- 
cestershire man, as Provost Marshal ; and "it it 
memorable what sport he made, by virtue of his 
office, upon men in misery." Here are one or two 
of his merry conceits, which read strangely like the 
jests reported by Herodotus : — 

235 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



(i) "One Boyer, Mayor of Bodmin in Cornwall, had 
been amongst the rebels, not willingly, but enforced : to 
him the Provost sent word he would come and dine with 
him : for whom the Mayor made great provision. A 
little before dinner, the Provost took the Mayor aside,, 
and whispered him in the ear, that an execution must 
that day be done in the town, and therefore required to 
have a pair of gallows set up against dinner should be done. 
The Mayor failed not of the charge. Presently after 
dinner the Provost, taking the Mayor by the hand, 
intreated him to lead him where the gallows was, which, 
when he beheld, he asked the Mayor if he thought them 
to be strong enough. 'Yes' (said the Mayor), 'doubtless 
they are.' ' Well, then ' (said the Provost), ' get you up- 
speedily, for they are provided for you.' ' I hope ' 
(answered the Mayor), ' you mean not as you speak.' 
* In faith ' (said the Provost), ' there is no remedy, for 
you have been a busie rebel.' And so without respite 
or defence he was hanged to death ; a most uncourteous 
part for a guest to offer his host." — Sir Rich. Baker, 1641. 

(2) '' Near the same place dwelt a Miller, who had 
been a busie actor in that rebellion ; who, fearing the 
approach of the Marshal, told a sturdy fellow, his 
servant, that he had occasion to go from home, and 
therefore bid him, that if any man came to inquire after 
the miller, he should not speak of him, but say that 
himself was the miller, and had been so for three years 
before. So the Provost came and called for the miller, 
when out comes the servant and saith he was the man. 
The Provost demanded how long he had kept the mill ? 
' These three years ' (answered the servant). Then the 
Provost commanded his men to lay hold on him and 

236 



AUGUST 



hang him on the next tree. At this the fellow cried out 
that he was not the miller, but the miller's man. ' Nay, 
■sir ' (said the Provost), ' I will take you at your word, 
and if thou beest the miller, thou art a busie knave ; if 
thou beest not, thou art a false lying knave ; and howso- 
ever, thou canst never do thy master better service than 
to hang for him ' ; and so, without more ado, he was 
dispatched." — Ihid. 

The story of one Mayov^, whom Kingston hanged 
at a tavern signpost in the town of St. Columb, has 
a human touch. " Tradition saith that his crime 
was not capital ; and therefore his wife was advised 
by her friends to hasten to the town after the 
Marshal and his men, who had him in custody, and beg 
his life. Which accordingly she prepared to do ; and 
to render herself the more amiable petitioner before 
the Marshal's eyes, this dame spent so much time in 
attiring herself and putting on her French hood, 
then in fashion, that her husband was put to death 
before her arrival." 

Such was the revenge wreaked on a population 
w^hich the English of the day took so little pains to 
understand that (as I am informed) in an old 
geography book of the days of Elizabeth, Cornwall 
is described as "a foreign country on that side of 
England next to Spain." 

*i :?? * # 

And now that the holiday season is upon us, and 
237 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



the visitor stalks our narrow streets, perhaps he will 
not resent a word or two of counsel in exchange for 
the unreserved criticism he lavishes upon us. We 
are flattered by his frequent announcement that on 
the whole he finds us clean and civil and fairly 
honest ; and respond with the assurance that we are 
always pleased to see him so long as he behaves 
himself. We, too, have found him clean and fairly 
honest ; and if we have anything left to desire, it is 
only that he will realise, a little more constantly, the 
extent of his knowledge of us, and the extent to 
which his position as a visitor should qualify his 
bearing towards us. I address this hint particularl}^ 
to those who make copy out of their wanderings in 
our midst ; and I believe it has only to be suggested, 
and it will be at once recognised for true, that the 
proper attitude for a visitor in a strange land is one 
of modesty. He may be a person of quite consider- 
able importance in his own home, even if that home 
be London ; but when he finds himself on strange 
soil he may still have a deal to learn from the people 
who have lived on that soil for generations, adapted 
themselves to its conditions and sown it with 
memories in which he cannot have a share. 

In truth, many of our visitors would seem to 
suffer from a confusion of thought. Possibly the 
Visitors' Books at hotels and places of public resort 
may have fostered this. Our guest makes a staj^ of 

238 



AUGUST 



a few weeks in some spot to which he has been 
attracted by its natural beauty : he idles and watches 
the inhabitants as they go about their daily business; 
and at the end he deems it not unbecoming to record 
his opinion that they are intelligent, civil, honest, 
and sober — or the reverse. He mistakes. It is he 
who has been on probation during these weeks — his 
intelligence, his civility, his honesty, his sobriety. 
For my part, I look forward to a time when Visitors' 
Books shall record the impressions which visitors 
leave behind them, rather than those which they 
bear away. For an instance or two : — 

(i) '' The Rev. and Mrs. , of , arrived here in 

August, 1897, and spent six weeks. We found them 
clean, and invariably sober and polite. We hope they- 
will come often. 

(2) " Mr. X and his friend Y, from Z, came over here, 
attired in flannels and the well-known blazer of the 
Tooting Bee Cricket Club. They shot gulls in the 
harbour, and made themselves a public nuisance by 
constant repetition of a tag from a music-hall song, with 
an indecent sub-intention. Their behaviour towards the 
young women of this town was oifensive, Seen in 
juxtaposition with the natural beauties of this coast, 
they helped one to realise how small a thing (under 
certain conditions) is man. 

(3) " Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so and family spent a 
fortnight here. The lady con] plained that the town was 

239 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



tiull, which we (who would have the best reason to 
complain of such a defect) do not admit. She announced 
her opinion in the street, at the top of her voice ; and 
expressed annoyance that there should be no band, to 
play of an evening. She should have brought one. 
Her husband carried about a note-book and asked us 
questions about our private concerns. He brought no 
letters of introduction, and we do not know his business. 
The children behaved better. 

(4) " Mr. Blank arrived here on a bicycle, and 
charmed us with the geniality of his address. We hope 
to see him again, as he left without discharging a number 
of small debts." 

It is, I take it, because the Briton has grown 
accustomed to invading other people's countries, 
that he expects, when travelling, to find a polite 
consideration which he does not import. But the 
tourist pushes the expectation altogether too far. 
When he arrives at a town which lays itself out to 
attract visitors for the sake of the custom they 
bring, he has a right to criticise, if he feel quite sure 
he is a visitor of the sort which the town desires. This 
is important : for a town may seek to attract visitors, 
and yet be exceedingly unwilling to attract some 
kinds of visitors. But should he choose to plant 
himself upon a spot where the inhabitants ask only 
to go about the ordinary occupations of life in 
quietness, it is the height of impertinence to proclaim 
that the life of the place does not satisfy his needs. 

240 



AUGUST 



Most intolerable of all is the conduct of the uninvited 
stranger who settles for a year or two in some quiet 
town — we suffer a deal from such persons along the 
south-western littoral — and starts with the intention 
of "putting a little 'go' into it," or, in another of 
his favourite phrases, of " putting the place to 
rights." Men of this mind are not to be reasoned 
with ; nor is it necessary that they should be reasoned 
with. Only, when the inevitable reaction is felt, 
and they begin to lose their temper, I would beg 
them not to assume too hastily that the "natives" 
have no sense of humour. All localities have a 
sense of humour, but it works diversely with them. 
A man may even go on for twenty years, despising 
his neighbours for the lack of it. But when the 
discovery comes, he will be lucky if the remembrance 
of it do not wake him up of nights, and keep him 
writhing in his bed — that is, if we suppose him to 
have a sense of humour too. 

An aeronaut who had lost his bearings, descending 
upon some farm labourers in Suffolk, demanded 
anxiously where he was. "Why, don't you know? 
You be up in a balloon, bo." A pedestrian in 
Cornwall stopped a labourer returning from work, 

and asked the way to St. . "And where might 

you come from ? " the labourer demanded. " I 
don't see what affair that is of yours. I asked you 
the way to St. ." ''Well then, if you don't tell 



241 
17 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



US where you be come from, we bain't goin' to tell 

you the way to St. ." It seems to me that both 

of these replies contain humour, and the second a 
deal of practical wisdom. 

The foregoing remarks apply, with very little 
modification, to those strangers who take up their 
residence in Cornwall and, having sojourned among 
us for a while without ever penetrating to the con- 
fidence of the people, pass judgment on matters of 
which, because they were above learning, knowledge 
has been denied to them. A clergyman, dwelling in 
a country parish where perhaps he finds himself the 
one man of education (as he understands it), is prone 
enough to make the mistake ; yet not more fatally 
prone than your Gigadibs, the literary man, who sees 
his unliterary (even illiterate) neighbours not as they 
are, but as a clever novelist would present them to 
amuse an upper or middle class reader. Stevenson 
(a greater man than Gigadibs) frankly confessed that 
he could make nothing of us : — 

" There were no emigrants direct from Europe — save 
one German family and a knot of Cornish miners who 
kept grimly by themselves, one reading the New 
Testament all day long through steel spectacles, the 
rest discussing privately the secrets of their old-world 
mysterious race. Lady Hester Stanhope believed she 
could make something great of the Cornish : for my part,. 
I can make nothing of them at all. A division of races, 

242 



older and more original than that of Babel, keeps this 
close esoteric family apart from neighbouring English- 
men. Not even a Red Indian seems more foreign in 
my eyes. This is one of the lessons of travel — that some 
of the strangest races dwell next door to you at home." 

This straightforward admission is worth (to my 
mind) any half-dozen of novels written about us by 
*' foreigners "who, starting with the Mudie-convention 
and a general sense that we are picturesque, write 
commentaries upon what is a sealed book and deal 
out judgments which are not only wrong, but wrong 
with a thoroughness only possible to entire self- 
complacency. 



And yet ... It seems to a Cornishman so 
easy to get at Cornish hearts — so easy even for a 
stranger if he will approach them, as they will at 
once respond, with that modesty which is the first 
secret of fine manners. Some years ago I was privi- 
leged to edit a periodical — though short-lived not 
wholly unsuccessful — the Cornish Magazine. At the 
end of each number we printed a page of " Cornish 
Diamonds," as we called them — scraps of humour 
picked up here and there in the Duchy by Cornish 
correspondents ; and in almost all of them the 
Cornishman was found gently laughing at himself; 
in not one of them (so far as I remember) at the 

243 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



stranger. Over and over again the jest depended on 
our small diiBculties in making our own distinctions 
of thought understood in English. Here are a few 
examples : — 

(i) " Please God," said Aunt Mary Bunny, " if I 
live till this evenin' and all's well I '11 send 
for the doctor." 

(2) *' I don't name no names," said Uncle Billy, 

" but Jack Tremenheere 's the man." 

(3) " I shan't go there nor nowhere else," said 

old Jane Caddy, " I shall go 'long up 
Redruth." 

(4) " I thought 'twere she, an' she thought 'twere 

I," said Gracey Temby, "but when we 
come close 'twadn't narry wan o' us." 

{5) A crowd stood on the cliff watching a stranded 
vessel and the lifeboat going out to her. 

*' What vessel is it ? " asked a late arrival. 

" The Dennis LaneJ' 

" How many be they aboord ? " 

''Aw, love and bless 'ee, there's three poor 
dear sawls and wan old Irishman." 

(6) Complainant (cross-examining defendant' 
witness) : *' What colour was the horse ? " 
''Black." 



244 



AUGUST 



** Well, I 'm not allowed to contradict you, and 
I wouldn' for worlds : but I say he wasn't." 

(7) A covey of partridges rose out of shot, flew 

over the hedge, and was lost to view. 
'' Where do you think they 've gone ? " said 

the sportsman to his keeper. *' There 's a 

man digging potatoes in the next field. 

Ask if he saw them." 
"Aw, that's old Sam Petherick : he hasna 

seed 'em, he 's hard o' hearin'." 

(8) Schoolmaster. — " I 'm sorry to tell you, Mr, 

Minards, that your son Zebedee is little 
better than a fool." 
Parent. — " Naw, naw, schoolmaster; my 
Zebedee 's no fule ; only a bit easy to teach." 

[I myself know a farmer who approached the 
head master of a Grammar School and begged for a 
reduction in terms: "because," he pleaded, "I know 
my son : he 's that thick you can get very little into 
en, and I believe in payment by results."] 

Here we pass from confusion of language into 
mere confusion of thought, the classical instance of 
which is the Mevagissey man who, having been 
asked the old question, "If a herring and a half 
cost three-halfpence, how many can you buy for 
a shilling ? " and having given it up and been told 
the answer, responded brightly, " Why, o' course 1 

245 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Darn me, if I wasn' thinkin' of pilchards!" I met 
with a fair Devon rival to this story the other day in 
the reported conversation of two farmers discussing the 
electric light at Chagford (run by Chagford's lavish 
water-power). ^' It do seem out of reason," said the 
one, " to make vire out o' watter." " No," agreed 
the other, ''it don't seem possible: but there" — after 
a slow pause — " 'tis biitiful water to Chaggyford ! " 

It was pleasant, while the Magazine lasted, to record 
these and like simplicities : and though the voyage was 
not long, one may recall without regret its send-off, 
brave enough in its way : — 

'"WISH 'EE WELL!' 

" The ensign 's dipped ; the captain takes the wheel. 

* So long ! ' the pilot waves, and ' Wish 'ee well ! ' 
Go little craft, and with a home-made keel 
'Mid loftier ships, but with a heart as leal, 

Learn of blue waters and the long sea swell ! 

^' Through the spring days we built and tackled thee, 
Tested thy timbers, saw thy rigging sound, 
Bent sail, and now put forth unto the sea 
Where those leviathans, the critics, be. 
And other monsters diversely profound. 

^' Some bronzed Phoenician with his pigmy freight 
Haply thy herald was, who drave of yore 
Deep-laden from Bolerium by the Strait 
Of Gades, and beside his city's gate 
Chaffered in ingots cast of Cornish ore. 

246 



AUGUST 



"So be thou fortunate as thou art bold ; 

Fare, little craft, and make the world thy friend : 
And, it may be — when all thy journey 's told 
With anchor dropped and tattered canvas rolled, 

And some good won for Cornwall in the end — 

'•' Thou wilt recall, as best, a lonely beach, 

And a few exiles, to the barter come, 
Who recognised the old West-country speech. 
And touched thee, reverent, whispering each to each- 
' She comes from far — from very far — from home. ' 



I have a special reason for remembering The 
Cornish Magazine, because it so happened that the 
first number (containing these hopeful verses) was 
put into my hands with the morning's letters as I 
paced the garden below this Cornish Window, 
careless of it or of anything but a doctor's verdict 
of life or death in the house above. The verdict 
was for life. . . 

Years ago as a child I used to devour in that 
wonderful book Good Words for the Young, the 
Lillipiit Levee and Lilliput Lyrics of the late William 
Brighty Rands : and among Rands' lyrics was one 
upon *' The Girl that Garibaldi kissed." Of late 
years Rands has been coming to something like his 
own. His verses have been republished, and that 
excellent artist Mr. Charles Robinson has illustrated 



247 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



them. But I must tell Mr. Robinson that his 
portrait of the Girl that Garibaldi kissed does not 
in the least resemble her. I speak with knowledge — 
I the child who have lived to meet and know the 
child whom Garibaldi kissed and blessed as the 
sailors were weighing anchor to carry him out of 
this harbour and away from England. Wild horses 
shall not drag from me the name of that young 
person ; because it happened — well, at an easily 
discoverable date — and she may not care for 
me to proclaim her age (as certainly she does not 
look it). 

" He bowed to my own daughter, 
And Polly is her name ; 
She wore a shirt of slaughter, 
Of Garibaldi flame — 

"Of course I mean of scarlet ; 

But the girl he kissed — who knows ? — 
May be named Selina Charlotte, 
And dressed in yellow clothes ! " 

But she isn't ; and she wasn't ; for she wore a 
scarlet pelisse as they handed her up the yacht's 
side, and the hero took her in his arms. 

*' It would be a happy plan 

For everything that 's human, 
If the pet of such a man 

Should grow to such a woman ! 



248 



AUGUST 



" If she does as much in her way 
As he has done in his — 
Turns bad things topsy-turvy, 
And sad things into bliss — 

" O we shall not need a survey 

To find that little miss, 

Grown to a woman worthy 

Of Garibaldi's kiss ! " 

Doggrel ? Yes, doggrel no doubt ! Let us pass oiic 



In the early numbers of our Cornish Magazine 
a host of contributors (some of them highly dis- 
tinguished) discussed the question, " Hov^ to develop 
Cornwall as a holiday resort." " Hov^ to bedevil 
it " was, I fear, our name in the editorial office for 
this correspondence. More and more as the debate 
went on I found myself out of sympathy with it,, 
and more and more in sympathy with a lady who 
raised an indignant protest — 

" Unless Cornishmen look to it, their country will be 
spoilt before they know it. Already there are signs of 
at — pitiable signs. Not many months ago I visited 
Tintagel, which is justly one of the prides of the Duchy. 
The 'swinging seas' are breaking against the great cliffs 
is they broke there centuries ago when Arthur and 
Launcelot and the Knights of the Round Table peopled 
the place. The castle is mostly crumbled away now, 
but some fraction of its old strength still stands to face 

249 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



the Atlantic gales, and to show us how walls were built 
in the grand old days. In the valley the grass is green 
and the gorse is yellow, and overhead the skies are blue 
and delightful : but facing Arthur's Castle — grinning 
down, as it were, in derision — there is being erected a 
modern hotel — ' built in imitation of Arthur's Castle,' as 
one is told ! . . . There is not yet a rubbish shoot 
over the edge of the cliff, but I do not think I am wrong 
in stating that the drainage is brought down into that 
cove where long ago (the story runs) the naked baby 
Arthur came ashore on the great wave ! " 

In summing up the discussion I confess with shame 
that I temporised. It was hard to see one's native 
country impoverished by the evil days in which 
mining (and to a lesser degree, agriculture) had 
fallen ; to see her population diminishing and her 
able-bodied sons emigrating by the thousand. It is 
all very pretty for a visitor to tell us that the charm 
of Cornwall is its primaeval calm, that it seems to 
sleep an enchanted sleep, and so on ; but we who 
inhabit her wish (and not altogether from mer- 
cenary motives) to see her something better than 
a museum of a dead past. I temporised therefore 
with those who suggested that Cornwall might 
yet enrich herself by turning her natural beauty 
to account : yet even so I had the sense to add 
that— 

" Jealous as I am for the beauty of our Duchy, and 

250 



AUGUST 



delighted when strangers admire her, I am, if possible, 
more jealous for the character of her sons, and more 
eager that strangers should respect them. And I do see 
(and hope to be forgiven for seeing it) that a people 
which lays itself out to exploit the stranger and the 
tourist runs an appreciable risk of deterioration in 
manliness and independence. It may seem a brutal 
thing to say, but as I had rather be poor myself than 
subservient, so would I liefer see my countrymen poor 
than subservient. It is not our own boast — we have it' 
on the fairly unanimous evidence of all who have visited 
us — that hitherto Cornishmen have been able to combine 
independence with good manners. For Heaven's sake, 
I say, let us keep that reputation, though at great cost ! 
But let us at the same time face the certainty that, 
when we begin to take pay for entertaining strangers it 
will be a hard reputation to keep. Were it within 
human capacity to decide between a revival of our 
ancient industries, fishing and mining, and the develop- 
ment of this new business, our decision would be prompt 
enough. But it is not." 

I despaired too soon. Our industries seem in 
a fair v^ay to revive, and with that promise I 
recognise that even in despair my v^illingness to 
temporise was foolish. For my punishment — though 
I helped not to erect them, — hideous hotels thrust 
themselves insistently on my sight as I walk our 
magnificent northern cliffs, and with the thought 
of that drain leading down to Arthur's cove 
I am haunted by the vision of Merlin erect 

251 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



above it, and by the memory of Hawker's canorous 
lines : — 

" He ceased ; and all around was dreamy night : 
There stood Dundagel, throned ; and the great sea 
Lay, like a strong vassal at his master's gate, 
And, like a drunken giant, sobbed in sleep ! " 



252 



S^pt 



ember 

In the Bag, 

August 30th. 

/\ T the village shop you may procure milk, 
^ butter, eggs, peppermints, trowsers, sun- 
bonnets, marbles, coloured handkerchiefs, and a 
number of other necessaries, including the London 
papers. But if you wish to pick and choose, you 
had better buy trowsers than the London papers; 
for this is less likely to bring you into conflict with 
the lady who owns the shop and asserts a prior 
claim on its conveniences. One of us (I will call 
him X) went ashore and asked for a London "daily." 
''Here's Lloyd's Weekly News for you," said the 
lady ; " but you can't have the daily, for I haven't 
finished reading it myself." *' Very well," said I, 
when this was reported; "if I cannot read the 
news I want, I will turn to and write it." So I 
descended to the shop, and asked for a bottle of ink ; 
since, oddly enough, there was none to be found on 
board. The lady produced a bottle and a pen. 
" But I don't want the pen," I objected. " They 

253 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



go together," said she : ** Whatever use is a bottle of 
ink without a pen ? " For the Hfe of me I could 
discover no answer to this. I paid my penny, and 
on returning with my purchases to the boat, I 
propounded the following questions : — 

(i) Qiicere. If, as the lady argued, a bottle of ink 
be useless without a pen, by what process of reasoning- 
did she omit a sheet of paper from her pennyworth ? 

(2) Suppose that I damage or wear out this pen 
before exhausting the bottle of ink, can she reason- 
ably insist on my taking a second bottle as a condition 
of acquiring a second pen ? 

(3) Suppose, on the other hand, that (as I compute) 
one pen will outlast two and a half bottles of ink ; 
that one bottle will distil thirty thousand words; and 
that the late James Anthony Froude (who lived close 
by) drew his supply of writing materials from this 
shop : how many unused pens (at a guess) must that 
distinguished man have accumulated in the process 
of composing his History of England ? 

We sailed into Salcombe on Saturday evening, in 
a hired yacht of twenty-eight tons, after beating 
around the Start and Prawl against a sou'westerly 
wind and a strong spring tide. Now the tide off the 
Start has to be studied. To begin with, it does not 
coincide in point of time with the tide inshore. The 
flood, or east stream, for instance, only starts to run 
there some three hours before it is high water at 

254 



SEPTEMBER 

Salcombe ; but, having started, runs with a ven- 
geance, or, to be more precise, at something Hke 
three knots an hour during the high springs ; and 
the consequence is a very lively race. Moreover, the 
bottom all the way from Start Point to Bolt Tail is 
extremely rough and irregular, which means that 
some ten or twelve miles of vicious seas can be set 
going on very short notice. Altogether you may 
spend a few hours here as uncomfortably as anywhere 
up or down Channel, with the single exception of 
Portland Race. If you turn aside for Salcombe, 
there is the bar to be considered ; and Salcombe bar 
is a danger to be treated with grave respect. The 
Channel Pilot will tell us why : — 

" There is 8 ft. water at L.W. springs on the bar at 
the entrance, but there are patches of 6 feet. Vessels 
drawing 20 ft. can cross it [when the sea is smooth) at 
H.W. springs, and those of 16 ft. at H.W. neaps. In 
S. gales there is a breaking, heavy sea, and no vessel 
should then attempt the bar; in moderate S. winds 
vessels may take it at high water." 

The bearing of these observations on the present 
narrative will appear anon. For the present, entering 
Salcombe with plenty of water and a moderate S.W. 
breeze, we had nothing to distract our attention from 
the beauty of the spot. I suppose it to be the most 
imposing river-entrance on the south coast ; perhaps 

255 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



the most imposing on any of the coasts of Britain. 
But being lazy and by habit a shirker of word- 
painting, I must have recourse to the description 
given in Mr. Arthur Underbill's Our Silver Streak, 
most useful and pleasant of handbooks for yachtsmen 
cruising in the Channel: — 

" As we approach Salcombe Head (part of Bolt Head), 
its magnificent form becomes more apparent. It is said 
to be about four hundred and thirty feet in height, but it 
looks very much more. Its base is hollowed out into 
numerous caverns, into which the sea dashes, while the 
profile of the head, often rising some forty or fifty feet 
sheer from the water, slopes back at an angle of about 
forty-five degrees in one long upward sweep, broken in 
the most fantastic way into numerous pinnacles and 
needles, which remind one forcibly of the aiguilles of the 
valley of Chamounix. I do not think that any headland 
in the Channel is so impressive as this." 

As we passed it, its needles stood out darkly 
against a rare amber sky — such a glow as is only seen 
for a brief while before a sunset following much rain ; 
and it had been raining, off and on, for a week past. 
I daresay that to the weatherwise this glow signified 
yet dirtier weather in store; but we surrendered 
ourselves to the charm of the hour. Unconscious 
of their doom the little victims played. We crossed 
the bar, sailed past the beautiful house in which 
Froude spent so many years, sailed past the little 

256 



SEPTEMBER 

town, rounded a point, saw a long quiet stretch of 
river before us, and cast anchor in deep water. The 
address at the head of this paper is no sportive 
invention of mine. You may verify it by the 
Ordnance Map. We were in the Bag. 

I awoke that night to the hum of wind in the 
rigging and the patter of rain on deck. It blew and 
rained all the morning, and at noon took a fresh 
breath and began to blow viciously. After luncheon 
we abandoned our project of walking to Bolt Head, 
and chose such books from the cabin library as 
might decently excuse an afternoon's siesta. A 
scamper of feet fetched me out of my berth and up 
on deck. By this time a small gale was blowing, 
and to our slight dismay the boat had dragged her 
anchors and carried us up into sight of Kingsbridge. 
Luckily our foolish career was arrested for the 
moment ; and, still more luckily, within handy 
distance of a buoy — laid there, I believe, for the use 
of vessels under quarantine. We carried out a 
hawser to this buoy, and waited until the tide 
should ease and allow us to warp down to it. Our 
next business was with the peccant anchors. We 
had two down — the best anchor and kedge; and 
supposed at first that the kedge must have parted. 
But a couple of minutes at the capstan reassured us. 
It was the kedge which had been holding us, to the 
extent of its small ability. And the Bag is an 

257 
18 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



excellent anchorage after all, but not if you happen 
to get your best anchor foul of its chain. We hauled 
up, cleared, warped down to the buoy; and then, 
hoisting mizzen and headsails, cast loose and worked 
back to our old quarters. 

The afternoon's amusement, though exciting 
enough in its way, was not what we had come 
to Salcombe to seek. And since the weather pro- 
mised nothing better, and already a heap of more or 
less urgent letters must be gathering dust in the post 
office at Plymouth, we resolved to beat over the bar 
at high water next morning {this morning), and, as 
Mr. Lang puts it, *' know the brine salt on our lips, 
and the large air again " : for there promised to be 
plenty of both between Bolt Head and the Mewstone. 



"Shun delays, they breed remorse,'' and ''Time 
wears all his locks before " (or, as the Fourth-form 
boy translated it in pentameter, " Tempus hahet nullas 
posteriori comas "). The fault was mine for wasting 
an invaluable hour among the "shy traffickers" of 
Salcombe. By the time we worked down to the bar 
the tide had been ebbing for an hour and a half. 
The wind still blew strong from the south-west, and 
the seas on the bar were not pleasant to contemplate. 
Let alone the remoter risk of scraping on one of the 
two shallow patches which diversify the west (and 



258 



SEPTEMBER 

only practicable) side of the entrance, if one of 
those big fellows happened to stagger us at the 
critical moment of '^ staying " it would pretty 
certainly mean disaster. Also the yacht (as I began 
by saying) was a hired one, and the captain tender 
about his responsibility. Rather ignominiously, 
therefore, we turned tail; and just as we did so, a 
handsome sea, arched and green, the tallest of the 
lot, applauded our prudence. All the same, our 
professional pride was wounded. To stay at anchor 
is one thing : to weigh and stand for the attempt and 
then run home again " hard up," as a sailor would 
say, is quite another. There was a Greek mariner, the 
other day, put on his trial with one or two comrades 
for murder and mutiny on the high seas. They had 
disapproved of their captain's altering the helm, and 
had pitched him incontinently overboard. On being 
asked what he had to say in his defence, the prisoner 
merely cast up his hands and sobbed, " Oh, cursed 
hour in which we put about ! " We recalled this 
simple but apposite story. 

Having seen to our anchor and helped to snug 
down the mainsail, I went below in the very worst of 
tempers, to find the cabin floor littered with the 
contents of a writing-case and a box of mixed 
biscuits, which had broken loose in company. As I 
stooped to collect the debris, this appeal (type-written) 
caught my eye : — 

259 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



" Dear Sir, — Oar paper is contemplating a Symposium 
of literary and eminent men — 

(Observe the distinction.) 

— on the subject of 'What is your favourite Modern- 
Lyric ? ' I need not say how much interest would 
attach to the opinion of one who," etc. 

I put my head up the companion and addressed a 
friend who v/as lacing tight the cover of the mainsail 
viciously, with the help of his teeth. 

'* Look here, X," I said. ''What is your favourite 
Modern Lyric ? " 

"That one," he answered (still with the lace 
between his teeth), ''which begins — 

'' ' Curse the people, blast the people, 
Damn the lower orders ! ' " 

X as a rule calls himself a Liberal-Conservative : 
but a certain acerbity of temper may be forgiven in 
a man who has just assisted (against all his instincts) 
in an act of poltroonery. He explained, too, that it 
was a genuine, if loosely remembered, quotation 
from Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer. 
"Yet in circumstances of peril," he went on, "and 
in moments of depression, you cannot think what 
sustenance I have derived from those lines." 

"Then you had best send them up," said I, "to 
the Daily Post. It is conducting a Symposium." 

" If two wrongs do not make a right," he answered 

260 



SEPTEMBER 



tartly, " even less will an assembly of deadly dry 
persons make something to drink." 

* * « * 

That evening, in the cabin, we held a symposium on 
our own account and in the proper sense of the term, 
while the rain drummed on the deck and the sky-lights. 

X said, '* The greatest poem written on love during 
these fifty years — and we agree to accept love as the 
highest theme of lyrical poetry — is George Meredith's 
Love in the Valley. I say this and decline to argue 
about it." 

"Nor am I disposed to argue about it," I answered, 
"for York Powell — peace to his soul for a great man 
gone — held that same belief. In his rooms in Christ 
Church, one night while The Oxford Book of Verse 
was preparing and I had come to him, as everyone 
came, for counsel. ... I take it, though, that 
we are not searching for the absolute best but for our 
own prime favourite. You remember what Swinburne 
says somewhere of Hugo's Gastihelza : — 

" ' Gastibelza, I'liomme a ia carabine, 

Chantait ainsi : 
Quelqu'un a-t-il connu Doiia Sabine ? 

Quelqu'an d'ici ? 
Dansez, chantez, villageois ! la nuit gagne 

Le mont Falou — 
Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne 

Me rendra fou!' 

261 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



'' ' The song of songs which is Hugo's,' he calls it ; 
and goes on to ask how often one has chanted or 
shouted or otherwise declaimed it to himself, on 
horseback at full gallop or when swimming at his 
best as a boy in holiday time ; and how often the 
matchless music, ardour, pathos of it have not 
reduced his own ambition to a sort of rapturous 
and adoring despair — yes, and requickened his old 
delight in it with a new delight in the sense that he 
will always have this to rejoice in, to adore, and to 
recognise as something beyond the reach of man. 
Well, that is the sense in which our poem should be 
our favourite poem. Now, for my part, there 's a 
page or so of Browning's Saul " 

''What do you say to Meredith's Phoebus with 
Admetus ?'' interrupted X. 

I looked up at him quickly, almost shamefacedly. 
*' Now, how on earth did you guess " 

X laid down his pipe, stared up at the sky-light, 
and quoted, almost under his breath : — 

" ' Bulls that walk the pasture in kingly- flashing coats ! 
Laurel, ivy, vine, wreath'd for feasts not few ! ' " 



Why is it possible to consider Mr. Meredith — 
whose total yield of verse has been so scanty and 
the most of it so " harsh and crabbed," as not only 
"'dull fools" suppose — beside the great poets who 

262 



SEPTEMBER 

have been his contemporaries, and to feel no im- 
propriety in the comparison ? That was the question 
X and I found ourselves discussing, ten minutes 
later. 

"Because," maintained X, "you feel at once that 
with Meredith you have hold of a man. You know 
— as surely, for example, as while you are listening to 
Handel — that the stuff is masculine, and great at 
that." 

" That is not all the secret," I maintained, 
" although it gets near to the secret. Why is it 
possible to consider Coleridge alongside of Words- 
worth and Byron, yet feel no impropriety ? 
Coleridge's yield of verse was ridiculously scanty 
beside theirs, and a deal more sensuous than W^ords- 
worth's, at any rate, and yet more manly, in a sense, 
than Byron's, which again was thoroughly manly with- 
in the range of emotion ? Why ? Because Coleridge 
and Meredith both have a philosophy of life : and he 
who has a philosophy of life may write little or 
much; may on the one hand write Christabel and 
leave it unfinished and decline upon opium ; or may, 
on the other hand, be a Browning or a Meredith, and 
^ keep up his end ' (as the saying is) nobly to the 
last, and vex us all the while with his asperities ; and 
yet in both cases be as certainly a masculine poet. 
Poetry (as I have been contending all my life) has 
one right background and one only : and that 

263 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



background is philosophy. You say, Coleridge and 
Meredith are masculine. I ask, Why are they 
masculine ? The answer is, They have philosophy." 

"You are on the old tack again : the old ra 
Ka^oXov ! 

" Yes, and am going to hold upon it until we fetch, 
land, so you may e'en fill another pipe and play the 
interlocutor. . . . You remember my once asking 
why our Jingo poets write such rotten poetr}^ (for 
that their stuff is rotten we agreed). The reason 
is, they are engaged in mistaking the part for the 
whole, and that part a non-essential one ; they are 
setting up the present potency of Great Britain as a 
triumphant and insolent exception to laws which (if 
we believe in any gods better than anarchy and 
chaos) extend at least over all human conduct and 
may even regulate ' the most ancient heavens.' You 
may remember m}^ expressed contempt for a recent 
poem which lauded Henry VIII because — 

" ' He was lustful, he was vengeful, he was hot 
and hard and proud ; 
But he set his England fairly in the sight of 
all the crowd.' 

— a worse error, to m}^ mind, than Froude's, wha 
merely idolised him for chastising the clerg}^ Well,, 
after our discussion, I asked myself this question : 
* Why do we not as a great Empire- making people,. 



264 



SEPTEMBER 

ruling the world for its good, assassinate the men 
who oppose us ? ' We do not ; the idea revolts us. 
But why does it revolt us ? 

"We send our armies to fight, with the certainty 
(if we think at all) that we are sending a percentage 
to be killed. We recently sent out two hundred 
thousand with the sure and certain knowledge that 
some thousands must die; and these (we say) were 
men agonising for a righteous cause. Why did it not 
afflict us to send them ? — whereas it would have 
afflicted us inexpressibly to send a man to end the 
difficulty by putting a bullet or a knife into Mr. 
Kruger, who ex hypothesi represented an unrighteous 
cause, and who certainly was but one man. 

''Why? Because a law above any that regulates 
the expansion of Great I^ritain says, 'That shalt do 
no murder.' And that law, that Universal, takes the 
knife or the pistol quietly, firmly, out of your hand. 
You send a battalion, with Tom Smith in it, to fight 
Mr. Kruger's troops; you know that some of them 
must in all likelihood perish ; but, thank your stars, 
you do not know their names. Tom Smith, as it 
happens, is killed; but had you known with absolute 
certainty that Tom Smith would be killed, you could 
not have sent him. You must have withdrawn him, 
and substituted some other fellow concerning whom 
your prophetic vision was less uncomfortably definite. 
You can kill Tom Smith if he has happened to kill 

265 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Bob Jones : you are safe enough then, being able to 
excuse yourself — how ? By Divine law again (as you 
understand it). Divine law says that whoso sheddeth 
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed — that is 
to say, by you : so you can run under cover and 
hang Tom Smith. But when Divine law does not 
protect you, you are powerless. At the most you 
can send him off to take his ten-to-one chance 
in a battalion, and when you read his name in the 
returns, come mincing up to God and say : * So 
poor old Tom 's gone ! How the deuce was / to 
know ? ' 

" I say nothing of the cowardice of this, though it 
smells to Heaven. I merely point out that this law 
* Thou shalt do no murder' — this Universal — must 
be a tremendous one, since even you, my fine swash- 
buckling, Empire-making hero, are so much afraid of 
it that you cannot send even a Reservist to death 
without throwing the responsibility on luck — nos 
te, nos facimus, Fortuna, deam — and have not even 
the nerve, without its sanction, to stick a knife 
into an old man whom you accuse as the 
wicked cause of all this bloodshed. If you believed 
in your accusations, why couldn't you do it ? Because 
a universal law forbade you, and one you have 
to believe in, truculent Jingo though you be. 
Why, consider this; your poets are hymning King 
Edward the Seventh as the greatest man on earth, 

266 



SEPTEMBER 

and yet, if he might possess all Africa to-morrow at 
the expense of signing the death-warrant of one 
innocent man who opposed that possession, he 
could not write his name. His hand would fall 
numb. Such power above kings has the Universal, 
though silly poets insult it w^ho should be its 
servants. 

*' Now of all the differences between men and 
women there is none more radical than this : that a 
man naturally loves law, whereas a woman naturally 
hates it and never sees a law without casting about 
for some way of dodging it. Laws, universals, 
general propositions — her instinct with all of them 
is to get off by wheedling the judge. So, if you 
want a test for a masculine poet, examine first 
whether or no he understands the Universe as a 
thing of law and order." 

"Then, by your own test, Kipling — the Jingo 
Kipling — is a most masculine poet, since he talks of 
little else." 

" I will answer you, although I believe you are not 
serious. At present Mr. Kipling's mind, in search of 
a philosophy, plays with the contemplation of a 
world reduced to law and order ; the law and order 
being such as universal British rule would impose. 
There might be many worse worlds than a world so 
ruled, and in verse the prospect can be made to look 
fair enough : — 

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FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



" ' Keep ye the Law — be swift in all obedience — 
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge 
the ford. 
Make ye sure to each his own 
That he reap where he hath sown ; 
■ By the peace among Our peoples let men know 
we serve the Lord ! ' 

Clean and wholesome teaching it seems, persuading^ 
civilised men that, as they are strong, so the 
obligation rests on them to set the world in order, 
carry tillage into its wildernesses, and clean up its 
bloodstained corners. Yet as a political philosoph)^ 
it lacks the first of all essentials, and as Mr. Kipling 
develops it we begin to detect the flaw in the system : — 

" ' The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood 
and stone ; 
'E don't obey no orders unless they is his own ; 
'E keeps 'is' side-arms awful : 'e leaves 'em all 

about, 
An' then comes up the regiment an' pokes the 
'eathen out. 
All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, 
All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less. 

Etc' 

*' What is wrong with this ? Why, simply that it 
leaves Justice altogether out of account. The system 
has no room for it; even as it has no room for 
clemency, mansuetude, forbearance towards the 

268 



SEPTEMBER 

weak. My next-door neighbour may keep his 
children in rags and his house in dirt, may be a loose 
liver with a frantically foolish religious creed ; but all 
this does not justify me in taking possession of his 
house, and either poking him out or making him a 
serf on his own hearthstone. If there be such a 
thing as universal justice, then all men have their 
rights under it — even verminous persons. We are 
obhged to put constraint upon them when their 
habits afflict us beyond a certain point. And civilised 
nations are obliged to put constraint upon uncivilised 
ones which shock their moral sense be3'ond a certain 
point — as by cannibalism or human sacrifice. But 
such interference should stand upon a nice sense of 
the offender's rights, and in practice does so stand. 
The custom of polygamy, for instance (as practised 
abroad), horribly offends quite a large majority of His 
Majesty's lieges ; yet Great Britain tolerates poly- 
gamy even in her own subject races. Neither 
polygamy nor uncleanliness can be held any just 
excuse for turning a nation out of its possessions. 

'' And another reason for insisting upon the strictest 
reading of justice in these dealings between nations 
is the temptation which the least laxity offers to the 
stronger — a temptation which Press and Pulpit made 
no pretence of resisting during the late war. ' We 
are better than they,' was the cry ; ' we are cleanlier, 
less ignorant ; we have arts and a literature, whereas 

269 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



they have none ; we make for progress and enhghten- 
ment, while they are absurdly conservative, if not 
retrogressive. Therefore the world will be the 
better by our annexing their land, and substituting 
our government for theirs. Therefore our cause, too, 
is the juster.' But therefore it is nothing of the sort. 
A dirty man may be in the right, and a clean man in 
the wrong ; an ungodly man in the right, and a godly 
man in the wrong ; and the most specious and well- 
intentioned system which allows justice to be con- 
fused with something else will allow it to be stretched, 
even by well-meaning persons, to cover theft, lying, 
and flat piracy." 

^' Are you trying to prove," demanded X, ''that 
Mr. Kipling is a feminine poet ? " 

" No, but I am about to bring you to the conclusion 
that in his worse mood he is a sham-masculine 
one. The * Recessional ' proves that, man of genius 
that he is, he rises to a conception of Universal Law. 
But too often he is trying to dodge it with sham law. 
A woman would not appeal to law at all : she would 
boldly take her stand on lawlessness. He, being an 
undoubted but misguided man, has to find some 
other way out ; so he takes a twopenny-halfpenny 
code as the mood seizes him — be it the code of a 
barrack or of a Johannesburg Jew — and hymns it 
lustily against the universal code : and the pity and 
the sin of it is that now and then by flashes — 

270 



SEPTEMBER 

as in ' The Tale of Purun Bhagat ' — he sees the 
truth. 

" You remember the figure of the Cave which 
Socrates invented and explained to Glaucon in Plato's 
* Republic ' ? He imagined men seated in a den which 
has its mouth open to the light, but their faces are 
turned to the wall of the den, and they sit with necks 
and legs chained so that they cannot move. Behind 
them, and between them and the light, runs a raised 
way with a low wall along it, ' like the screen over which 
marionette-players show their puppets.' Along this 
wall pass men carrying all sorts of vessels and 
statues and figures of animals. Some are talking, 
others silent ; and as the procession goes by the 
chained prisoners see only the shadows passing 
across the rock in front of them, and, hearing the 
voices echoed from it, suppose that the sound comes 
from the shadows. 

" To explain the fascination of Mr. Kipling's verse 
one might take this famous picture and make one 
fearsome addition to it. There sits (one might go 
on to say) among the prisoners a young man different 
from them in voice and terribly different to look 
upon, because he has two pairs of eyes, the one 
turned towards the light and realities, the other 
towards the rock-face and the shadows. Using, 
now one, now the other of these two pairs of eyes^ 
he never knows with which at the moment he is 

271 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



gazing, whether on the reahties or on the shadows, 
but always supposes what he sees at the moment to 
be the reahties, and calls them ' Things as They Are.' 
Further, his lips have been touched with the glory of 
the greater vision, and he speaks enchantingly when 
he discourses of the shadows on the rock, thereby 
deepening the delusion of the other prisoners whom 
his genius has played the crimp to, enticing them 
into the den and hocussing and chaining them there. 
For, seeing the shadows pass to the interpretation of 
such a voice, they are satisfied that they indeed 
behold Things as They Are, and that these are the 
only things worth knowing. 

" The tragedy of it lies in this, that Mr. Kipling in 
his greater moments cannot help but see that he, 
with every inspired singer, is b}^ right the prophet of 
a law and order compared with which all the majestic 
law and order of the British Empire are but rags 
and trumpery : — 

'* ' I ba' harpit ye up to the throne o' God, 

I ha' harpit your midmost soul in three ; 
I ha' harpit ye down to the Hinges o' Hell, 
And — ye— would — make - a Knight o' me!' 



" Not long ago an interviewer called on Mr. 
Meredith, and brought av/ay this for his pains : — 

272 



SEPTEMBER 



*" I suppose I should regard myself as getting old — I 
am seventy-four. But I do not feel to be growing old 
either in heart or mind. I still look on life with a young 
man's eye. I have always hoped I should not grow old 
as some do — with a palsied intellect, living backwards, 
regarding other people as anachronisms because they 
themselves have Hved on into other times, and left their 
sympathies behind them with their years.' 

" He never will. He will always preserve the 
strength of manhood in his work because hope, the 
salt of manhood, is the savour of all his philosophy. 
When I think of his work as a whole — his novels 
and poems together — this confession of his appears 
to me, not indeed to summarise it — for it is far too 
multifarious and complex — but to say the first and 
the last word upon it. In poem and in novel he puts 
a solemnity of his own into the warning, ne tu pueri 
contempseris annos. He has never grown old, because 
his hopes are set on the young ; and his dearest wish, 
for those who can read beneath his printed word, is 
to leave the world not worse, but so much the better 
as a man may, for the generations to come after him. 
To him this is ' the cry of the conscience of life ' : — 

" * Keep the young generations in hail. 
And bequeath them no tumbled house.' 

To him this is at once a duty and a *sustainment 
supreme,' and perhaps the bitterest words this master 

273 
19 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



of Comedy has written are for the seniors of the race 

who — 

*' ' On their last plank, 
Pass mumbling it as nature's final page,' 

and cramp the young with their rules of 'wisdom,* 
lest, as he says scornfully : — 

" ' Lest dreaded change, long dammed by dull decay, 
Should bring the world a vessel steered by brain, 
And ancients musical at close of day.' 

* Earth loves her young,' begins his next sonnet : — 

" ' Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads 

The ways they walk ; by what they speak oppressed.* 

But his conviction, if here for a moment it discharges 
gall, is usually cheerful with the cheerfulness of 
health. Sometimes he consciously expounds it ; 
oftener he leaves you to seek and find it, but always 
(I believe) you will find this happy hope in youth at 
the base of everything he writes. 

**The next thing to be noted is that he does not 
hope in youth because it is a period of license 
and waywardness, but because it is a period of 
imagination — 

** ' Days, when the ball of our vision 

Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun,' 

and because it therefore has a better chance of 
grasping what is Universal than has the^' prudential 

274 



SEPTEMBER 



wisdom of age which contracts its eye to particulars 
and keeps it alert for social pitfalls — the kind of 
wisdom seen at its best (but its best never made a 
hero) in Bubb Doddington's verses : — 

" ' Love thy country, wish it well, 
Not with too intense a care ; 
'Tis enough that, when it fell, 
Thou its ruin didst not share.' 

Admirable caution ! Now contrast it for a moment 
with, let us say, the silly quixotic figure of Horatius 
with the broken bridge behind him : — 

'' ' Round turned he, as not deigning 

Those craven ranks to see : 
Nought spake he to Lars Porsena, 

To Sextus nought spake he ; 
But he saw on Palatinus 

The white porch of his home — ' 

" I protest I have no heart to go on with the 
quotation : so unpopular is its author, just now, and 
so certainly its boyish heroism calls back the boyish 
tears to my eyes. Well, this boyish vision is what 
Mr. Meredith chooses to trust rather than Bubb 
Doddington's, and he trusts it as being the likelier to 
apprehend universal truths : he believes that Horatius 
with an army in front and a broken bridge behind 
him was a nobler figure than Bubb Doddington 
wishing his country well but not with too intense a 

275 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



care ; and not only nobler but — this is the point — 
more obedient to divine law, more expressive of that 
which man was meant to be. If Mr. Meredith trusts 
youth, it is as a time of imagination ; and if he trusts 
imagination, it is as a faculty for apprehending the 
Universal in life — that is to say, a divine law behind 
its shows and simulacra. 

"In *The Empty Purse' you will find him instruct. 
ing youth towards this law; but that there may be no 
doubt of his own belief in it, as an order not only 
controlling men but overriding angels and demons, 
first consider his famous sonnet, * Lucifer in Starlight ' 
— to my thinking one of the finest in our language : — 

" ' On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. 

Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend 
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, 
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. 
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. 
And now upon his western wing he leaned, 
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened, 
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. 

Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars 

With memory of the old revolt from Awe, 
He reached a middle height, and at the stars, 
Which are the brain of Heaven, he looked, and sank. 
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank. 
The army of unalterable law.' 

* * * * 

** Suppose my contention — that poetry should 

276 



SEPTEMBER 

concern itself with universals — to be admitted: 
suppose we all agreed that Poetry is an expression of 
the universal element in human life, that (as Shelley 
puts it) * a poem is the very image of life expressed 
in its eternal truth.' There remains a question quite 
as important : and that is, How to recognise the 
Universal when we see it ? We may talk of a 
Divine law, or a Divine order — call it what we will — 
which regulates the lives of us poor men no less than 
the motions of the stars, and binds the whole 
universe, high and low, into one system : and we 
may have arrived at the blessed wish to conform 
with this law rather than to strive and kick against 
the pricks and waste our short time in petulant 
rebellion. So far, so good : but how are we to know 
the law ? How, with the best will in the world, are 
we to distinguish order from disorder ? What 
assurance have we, after striving to bring ourselves 
into obedience, that we have succeeded ? We may 
agree, for example, with Wordsworth that Duty is a 
stern daughter of the Voice of God, and that through 
Duty *the most ancient heavens,' no less than we 
ourselves, are kept fresh and strong. But can we 
always discern this Universal, this Duty ? What is 
the criterion ? And what, when we have chosen, is 
the sanction of our choice ? 

"A number of honest people will promptly refer 
us to revealed religion. 'Take (they say) your 

277 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



revealed religion on faith, and there you have the law 
and the prophets, and your universals set out for you, 
and your principles of conduct laid down. What 
more do you want ? ' 

"To this I answer, *We are human, and we need 
also the testimony of Poetry ; and the priceless value 
of poetry for us lies in this, that it does not echo the 
Gospel like a parrot. If it did, it would be servile, 
superfluous. It is ministerial and useful because it 
approaches truth by another path. It does not say 
ditto to Mr. Burke — it corroborates. And it corrobo- 
rates precisely because it does not say ditto, but 
employs a natural process of its own which it 
employed before ever Christianity was revealed. 
You may decide that religion is enough for you, and 
that you have no need of poetry ; but if you have any 
intelligent need of poetry it will be because poetry, 
though it end in the same conclusions, reaches them 
by another and separate path. 

" Now (as I understand him) Mr. Meredith con- 
nects man with the Universal, and teaches him to 
arrive at it and recognise it by strongly reminding 
him that he is a child of Earth. * You are amenable,' 
he says in effect, * to a law which all the firmament 
obeys. But in all that firmament you are tied to one 
planet, which we call Earth. If therefore you would 
apprehend the law, study your mother, Earth, which 
also obeys it. Search out her operations ; honour 



278 



SEPTEMBER 

your mother as legitimate children, and let your 
honour be the highest you can pay — that of making 
yourself docile to her teaching. So will you stand 
the best chance, the only likely chance, of living in 
harmony with that Will which over-arches Earth 
and us all.' 

" In this doctrine Mr. Meredith believes passion- 
ately ; so let there be no mistake about the thorough- 
ness with which he preaches it. Even prayer, he 
tells us in one of his novels, is most useful when like 
a fountain it falls back and draws refreshment from 
earth for a new spring heavenward : — 

^' ' And there vitality, there, there solely in song 

Besides, where earth and her uses to men, their 
needs. 
Their forceful cravings, the theme are : there is it 
strong, 
The Master said : and the studious eye that reads, 
(Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the 
mount), 
In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound. 
Pursue thy craft : it is music drawn of the fount 
To spring perennial ; well-spring is common 
ground.' 

And it follows that to one who believes in the 
teaching of earth so whole-heartedly earth is not a 
painted back-cloth for man to strut against and 
attitudinise; but a birth-place from which he cannot 

279 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



escape, and in relation with which he must be 
considered, and must consider himself, on pain of 
becoming absurd. Even 

*' * His cry to heaven is a cry to her 
He would evade.' 

She is a stern mother, be it understood, no coddling 
one : — 

" * He may entreat, aspire, 

He may despair, and she has never heed, 

She, drinking his warm sweat, will soothe his need, 

Not his desire.' 

When we neglect or misread her lessons, she 
punishes; at the best, she offers no fat rewards to 

the senses, but — 

" ' The sense of large charity over the land ; 

Earth's wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough, 
And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal.' 

{' Lean fare,' as the poet observes ; and unpalatable, 
for instance, to our Members of Parliament, to 
whom our Mr. Balfour one evening paid the highest 
compliment within their range of apprehension by 
assuming that quite a large number of them could 
write cheques for ^69,000 without inconvenience.) 
At the best, too, she offers, with the loss of things 
we have desired, a serene fortitude to endure their 
loss : — 

280 



SEPTEMBER 



*' ' Love born of knowledge, love that gains 
Vitality as Earth it mates, 
The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, 
The Life, the Death, illuminates. 

" ' For love we Earth, then serve we all ; 
Her mystic secret then is ours : 
We fall, or view our treasures fall. 
Unclouded — as beholds her flowers 

" * Earth, from a night of frosty wreck, 
Enrobed in morning's mounted fire, 
When lowly, with a broken neck, 
The crocus lays her cheek to mire.' 

But at least it is the true milk for man that she 
distils — 

'* ' From her heaved breast of sacred common mould'; 

the breast (to quote from another poem) — 

" ' Which is his well of strength, his home of rest, 
And fair to scan.' 

And so Mr. Meredith, having diagnosed our disease, 
which is Self — our 'distempered devil of Self,' 
gluttonous of its own enjoyments and therefore 
necessarily a foe to law, which rests on temperance 
and self-control — walks among men like his own 
wise physician, Melampus, with eyes that search the 
book of Nature closely, as well for love of her as to 
discover and extract her healing secrets. 

281 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



** ' With love exceeding a simple love of the things 

That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck ; 
Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings 
From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and 
peck; 
Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball ; 
Or cast their web between bramble and thorny 
hook; 
The good physician Melampus, loving them all, 
Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a 
book. 

*' ' For him the woods were a home and gave him the 
key 
Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs 
and flowers. 
The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we 
To earth he sought, and the link of their life 
with ours. . . .' 

*' Here by another road we come to a teaching 
which is also the Gospels' : that to apprehend the 
highest truth one must have a mind of extreme 
humility. * Blessed are the meek, for they shall 
inherit the earth,' * Neither shall they say, Lo here ! 
or Lo there ! for behold the kingdom of God is 
within you,' * And He took a little child and set him 
in the midst of them,' &c. Poetry cannot make 
these sayings any truer than they are, but it can 
illuminate for us the depths of their truth, and so 
(be it humbly said) can help their acceptance by 

282 



SEPTEMBER 

man. If they come down from heaven, derived 
from arguments too high for his ken, poetry confirms 
them by arguments taken from his ov^n earth, 
instructing him the while to read it as — 

" * An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet 
Buried, and breathing, and to be,' 

and teaching him, * made lowly wise,' that the truth 
of the highest heavens lies scattered about his feet. 

*' ' Melampus dwelt among men, physician and sage, 
He served them, loving them, healing them ; sick 
or maimed. 
Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage 

Outran the measure, his juice of the woods 
reclaimed. 
He played on men, as his master Phoebus on strings 

Melodious : as the God did he drive and check. 
Through love exceeding a simple love of the things 
That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.' 

** I think, if we consider the essence of this 
teaching, we shall have no difficulty now in under- 
standing why Mr. Meredith's hopes harp so per- 
sistently on the 'young generations,' why our duty 
to them is to him * the cry of the conscience of life,' 
or why, as he studies Earth, he maintains that — 

" ' Deepest at her springs, 
Most filial, is an eye to love her young.' 

■» * ^ -if. 

*' But Meredith, if a true poet, is also and 

283 . 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



undeniably a hard one : and a poet must not only 
preach but persuade. * He dooth not only show 
the way,' says Sidney, *but giveth so sweet a 
prospect into the way as will intice any man to 
enter into it.' 

" Here, my dear X, I lay hands on you and drag 
you in as the Conscientious Objector. * How ? ' you 
will ask. * Is not the plain truth good enough for 
men ? And if poetry must win acceptance for her 
by beautiful adornments, alluring images, capti- 
vating music, is there not something deceptive 
in the business, even if it be not downright 
dishonest ? ' Well, I think you have a right to be 
answered." 

"Thank you," said X. 

*'And I don't think you are convincingly answered 
by Keats' — 

" * Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' 

With all respect to the poet, we don't know it ; and 
if we did it would come a long way short of all we 
need to know. The Conscientious Objector will none 
the less maintain that truth and beauty have never 
been recognised as identical, and that, in practice, to 
employ their names as convertible terms would lead 
to no end of confusion. I like the man (you will be 
glad to hear), because on an important subject he 

284 



SEPTEMBER- 



will be satisfied with nothing less than clear thinking. 
My own suspicion is that, when we have yielded him 
the inquiry which is his due into the relations between 
truth and beauty, we shall discover that spiritual 
truth — with which alone poetry concerns itself — is 
less a matter of ascertained facts than of ascertained 
harmonies, and that these harmonies are incapable of 
being expressed otherwise than in beautiful terms. 
But pending our inquiry (which must be a long one) 
let us put to the objector a practical question : 
* What forbids a man, who has the truth to tell, from 
putting it as persuasively as possible ? Were not the 
truths of the Gospel conveyed in parables ? And is 
their truth diminished because these parables are 
exquisite in form and in language ? Will you only 
commend persuasiveness in a sophist who engages to 
make the worst argument appear the better, and 
condemn it in a teacher who employs it to enforce 
truth ? ' The question, surely, is answered as soon 
as we have asked it. 

"And the further particular question, Is Mr. 
Meredith a persuasive poet ? will be answered as 
promptly by us. He can be — let us grant — a 
plaguily forbidding one. His philosophy is not 
easy; yet it seems to me a deal easier than many 
of his single verses. I hope humbly, for instance, 
one of these days, to discover what is meant by such 
a verse as this : — 



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FROM A CORxMISH WINDOW 



" * Thou animatest ancient tales, 

To prove our world of linear seed ; 
Thy very virtue now assails 
A tempter to mislead.' 

Faint, yet pursuing, I hope ; but I must admit that 
such writing does not obviously allure, that it rather 
dejects the student by the difficulty of finding a stool 
to sit down and be stoical on. ' Nay,' to parody 
Sidney, *he dooth as if your journey should lye 
through a fayre Vineyard, at the first give you a 
handful of nuts, forgetting the nut-crackers.' He 
is, in short, half his time forbiddingly difficult, and 
at times to all appearance so deliberately and yet so 
wantonly difficult, that you wonder what on earth 
you came out to pursue and why you should be 
tearing your flesh in these thickets. 

"And then you remember the swinging cadences 
of * Love in the Valley ' — the loveliest love-song of 
its century. Who can forget it ? : 

*' ' Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping 
Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star, 
Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, 

Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown evejar. 
Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting ; 

So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. 
Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well- 
spring, 
Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.' 

286 



SEPTEMBER 

And you swear that no thickets can be so dense but 
you will wrestle through them in the hope of hearing 
that voice again, or even an echo of it. 

" ' Melampus,' 'The Nuptials of Attila,' *The Day 
of the Daughter of Hades,' *The Empty Purse,' 
* Jump-to-Glory Jane,' and the splendid 'Phoebus 
with Admetus ' — you come back to each again and 
again, compelled by the wizardry of single lines and by 
a certain separate glamour which hangs about each 
of them. Each of them is remembered by you as in 
its own way a superb performance; lines here and 
there so haunt you with their beauty that you 
must go back and read the whole poem over for the 
sake of them. Other lines you boggle over, and yet 
cannot forget them ; you hope to like them better at 
the next reading ; you re-read, and wish them away, 
yet find them, liked or disliked, so embedded in your 
memory that you cannot do without them. Take, for 
instance, the last stanza of ' Phoebus with Admetus ": — 

" ' You with shelly horns, rams ! and promontory goats. 
You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew ! 
Bulls that walk the pasture in kingly-flashing coats ! 

Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few ! 
You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the 
rays, 
You that leap besprinkling the rock stream- rent ; 
He has been our fellow, the morning of our days ; 
Us he chose for house-mates, and this way went.' 

287 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



The first thing that made this stanza unforgettable 
was the glorious third line : almost as soon * promon- 
tory goats ' fastened itself on memory ; and almost 
as soon the last two lines were perceived to be 
excellent, and the fourth also. These enforced you, 
for the pleasure of recalling them, to recall the whole, 
and so of necessity to be hospitably minded toward 
the fifth and sixth lines, which at first repelled as 
being too obscurely and almost fantastically ex- 
pressed. Having once passed it in, I find * You that 
leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent,' with its 
delicate labial pause and its delicate consonantal 
chime, one of the most fascinating lines in the 
stanza. And since, after being the hardest of all to 
admit, it has become one of the best liked, I am 
forced in fairness to ask myself if hundreds of lines 
of Mr. Meredith's which now seem crabbed or 
fantastic may not justify themselves after many 
readings. 

" The greatest mistake, at all events, is to suppose 
him ignorant or careless of the persuasiveness which 
lies in technical skill; though we can hardly be 
surprised that he has not escaped a charge which was 
freely brought against Browning, than whom, perhaps, 
no single poet was ever more untiring in technical 
experiment. Every poem of Browning's is an 
experiment — sometimes successful, sometimes not — 
in wedding sense with metre ; and so is every poem 



288 



SEPTEMBER 

of Mr. Meredith's (he has even attempted gaUiambics), 
though he cannot emulate Browning's range. But 
he, too, has had his amazing successes — in the long, 
swooping lines of * Love in the Valley ' : — 

-*' ' Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, 
Swift as the swallow along the river's light, 
Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, 
Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.' 

— in the ' Young Princess,' the stanzas of which are 
a din of nightingales' voices ; in ' The Woods of 
Westermain ' and ' The Nuptials of Attila,' where 
the ear awaits the burthen, as the sense awaits the 
horror, of the song, and the poet holds back both, 
increasing the painful expectancy; or in the hammered 
measure of ' Phoebus with Admetus ' — a real triumph. 
Of each of these metres you have to admit at once 
that it is strange and arresting, and that you cannot 
conceive the poem written in any other. And, as I 
liave said, their very asperities tend, with repetition, 
to pass into beauties. 

" But, in the end, he is remembered best for his 
philosophy, as the poet who tells us to have courage 
and trust in nature, that thereby we may attain 
whatever heaven may be. ' Neither shall they say, 
Lo, here ! or Lo, there ! for behold the kingdom of 
heaven is within you' — yes, and hell, too, Mr. 
Meredith wants us : — 

289 
20 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



*" In tragic life, God wot, 
No villain need be ! Passions spin the plot : 
We are betrayed by what is false within.' 

So, again, in * The Woods of Westermain,' we are 
warned that the worst betrayal for man lies in the 
cowardice of his own soul : — 

" ' But have care. 

In yourself may lurk the trap.' 

Are you at heart a poltroon or a palterer, cruel, dull, 
envious, full of hate ? Then Nature, the mother of 
the strong and generous, will have no pity, but will 
turn and rend you with claws. * Trust her with your 
whole heart,' says Mr. Meredith, ' and go forward 
courageously until you follow 

" ' Where never was track 
On the path trod of all.' 

The fight is an ennobhng one, when all is said : 
rejoice in it, because our children shall use the 

victory. 

" ' Take stripes or chains ; 

Grip at thy standard reviled. 
And what if our body be dashed from the steeps ? 
Our spoken in protest remains. 
A younger generation reaps.' " 



290 



SEPTEMBER 



From a Cornish Window, 

Thursday^ Sept, 2nd, 
" Hoist up sail while gale doth last. . ." 

I do not call this very sound advice : but we 
followed it, and that is the reason wh}^ I am able to 
send off my monthly packet from the old address. 
Also it came ver}^ near to being a reason why I had 
no letter to send. The wind blew as obstinately as 
ever on the Tuesday morning ; but this time we 
arranged our start more carefully, and beat out over 
the bar in comparatively smooth water. The seas 
outside were not at all smooth, but a Newlyn -built 
boat does not make much account of mere seas, and 
soon after midday we dropped anchor in Plymouth 
Cattewater, and went ashore for our letters. 

We were sworn to reach home next day, and 
somehow we forgot to study the barometer, which 
was doing its best to warn us. The weather was 
dirtier than ever and the wind harder. But we had 
grown accustomed to this : and persuaded ourselves 
that, once outside of the Rame, we could make a 
pretty fetch of it for home and cover the distance at 
our best speed — which indeed we did. But I confess 
that as we passed beyond the breakwater, and met 
the Plymouth trawlers running back for shelter, I 
began to wonder rather uneasily how the barometer 
might be behaving, and even dallied with the 

291 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



resolution to go below and see. We were well dressed 
down, however — double - reefed mainsail, reefed 
mizzen, foresail and storm jib — and after our beating 
at Salcombe none of us felt inclined to raise the 
question of putting back. There was nothing to 
hurt, as 5^et : the boat was shaking off the water like 
a duck, and making capital weather of it ; we told 
each other that once beyond the Rame, with the sea 
on our quarter, we should do handsomely. And the 
gale — the newspapers called it a hurricane, but it 
was merely a gale — waited patiently until we were 
committed to it. Half an hour later we took in the 
mizzen, and, soon after, the foresail : and even so, 
and close-hauled, were abreast of Looe Island just 
forty-seven minutes after passing the Rame — nine 
miles. For a 28-ton cruiser this will be allowed to 
be fair going. For my own part I could have wished 
it faster : not from any desire to break " records," 
but because, should anything happen to our gear, we 
were uncomfortably close to a lee-shore, and the best 
hehaved of boats could not stand up against the 
incessant shoreward thrust of the big seas crossing 
us. Also, to make matters worse, the shore itself 
now and then vanished in the "dirt." On the whole, 
therefore, it was not too soon for us that we opened 
the harbour and 

" saw on Palatinus 
The white porch of our home," 



292 



SEPTEMBER 

though these were three or four times hidden from 
us by the seas over which we toppled through the 
harbour's mouth and into quiet water. While the 
sails were stowing I climbed down the ladder, and 
sat in front of the barometer, and wondered how 
I should like this sort of thing if I had to ga 
through it often, for my living. 



293 



r^ctober 



*' Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. . . ." 

I HAVE been planting a perennial border in the 
garden and consulting, with serious damage to 
the temper, a number of the garden-books now in 
fashion. When a man drives at practice — when he 
desires to know precisely at what season, in what 
soil, and at what depth to plant his martagon lilies, 
to decide between Ayrshire Ruga and Fellenberg for 
the pillar that requires a red rose, to fix the right 
proportion of sand and leaf-mould to suit his carna- 
tions — when *' his only plot " is to plant the bergamot 
— he resents being fobbed off with prattle : — 

" My squills make a brave show this morning, and the 
little petticoated Narcissus Cyclamineus in the lower 
rock-garden (surely Narcissus ought to have been a girl!) 
begins to ' take the winds of March with beauty.' I am 
expecting visitors, and hope that mulching will benefit 
the Yellow Pottebakkers, which I don't want to flower 
before Billy comes home from school," etc. 

But the other day, in " The Garden's Story," by 
Mr. George H. Ellwanger, I came upon a piece of 

294 



OCTOBER 

literary criticism which gave me a pleasurable pause 
in my search for quite other information. Mr. 
Ellwanger, a great American gardener, has observed 
that our poets usually sing of autumn in a minor key, 
which startles an American who, while accustomed to 
our language, cannot suit this mournfulness with the 
still air and sunshine and glowing colour of his own 
autumn. With us, as he notes, autumn is a dank, 
sodden season, bleak or shivering. "The sugar and 
scarlet maple, the dogwood and sumac, are wanting 
to impart their warmth of colour; aiid St. Martin's 
summer somehow fails to shed a cheerful influence " 
comparable with that of the Indian summer over 
there. The Virginia creeper which reddens our 
Oxford walls so magnificently in October is an im- 
portation of no very long standing — old enough to be 
accepted as a feature of the place, not yet old enough 
to be inseparably connected with it in song. Yet — 

" Of all odes to autumn, Keats's, I believe, is most 
universally admired. This might almost answer to our 
own fall of the leaf, and is far less sombre than many 
apostrophes to the season that occur throughout English 
verse." 

From this Mr. Ellwanger proceeds to compare 
Keats's with the wonderful " Ode to Autumn " which 
Hood wrote in 1823 (each ode, by the way, belongs 
to its author's twenty-fourth year), less perfect, to be 

295 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



sure, and far less obedient to form, but with lines so 
haunting and images so full of beauty that they 
do not suffer in the comparison. Listen to the. 
magnificent opening : — 

" I saw old Autumn in the misty morn 

Stand shadowless like Silence, listening 
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing 
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, 
Nor lonely hedge, nor solitary thorn. . ." 

I had never (to my shame) thought of comparing 
the two odes until Mr. Ellwanger invited me. He 
notes the felicitous use of the O-sounds throughout 
Hood's ode, and points out, shrewdly as correctly,, 
that the two poets were contemplating two different 
stages of autumn. Keats, more sensuous, dwells on 
the stage of mellow fruitfulness, and writes of late 
October at the latest. Hood's poem lies close *'on 
the birth of trembling winter " : he sings more 
austerely of November's desolation : — 

"Where is the pride of Summer — the green prime — 
The many, many leaves all twinkling ? — Three 
On the moss'd elm ; three on the naked lime 
Trembling, — and one upon the old oak tree ! 
Where is the Dryad's immortality ? 
Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew, 
Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through 
In the smooth holly's green eternity. 

296 



OCTOBER 



*' The squirrel gloats o'er his accomplish'd hoard, 
The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain, 

And honey bees have stored 
The sweets of summer in their luscious cells ; 
The swallows all have wing'd across the main ; 
But here the Autumn melancholy dwells. 

And sighs her tearful spells 
Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. 

Alone, alone 

Upon a mossy stone 
She sits and reckons up the dead and gone 
With the last leaves for a love-rosary. . ." 

The last image involves a change of sex| in 
personified Autumn : an awkwardness, I allow. But 
if the awkwardness of the change can be excused,. 
Hood's lines excuse it : — 

" O go and sit with her and be o'er-shaded 
Under the languid downfall of her hair ; 
She wears a coronal of flowers faded 

Upon her forehead, and a face of care ; 
There is enough of wither'd everywhere 
To make her bower, — and enough of gloom. . ." 



In spite of its ambiguity of sex and in spite of its 
irregular metre, I find, with Mr. Ellwanger, more 
force of poetry in Hood's ode than in Keats's ; and 
this in spite of one's prejudice in favour of the greater 
poet. It came on me with a small shock therefore 

297 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



to find that Mr. Bridges, in his already famous 
Essay on Keats, ranks " Autumn " as the very best 
of all Keats's Odes. 

Now whether one agrees with him or not, there is 
no loose talk in Mr. Bridges's criticism. He tells us 
precisely why he prefers this poem to that other : 
and such definiteness in critical writing is not only 
useful in itself but perhaps the severest test of a 
critic's quality. No task can well be harder than to 
take a poem, a stanza, or a line, to decide ''Just here 
lies the strength, the charm ; or just here the loose- 
ness, the defect." In any but the strongest hands 
these methods ensure mere niggling ingenuity, in 
which all appreciation of the broader purposes of the 
author — of Aristotle's "universal" — disappears, while 
the critic reveals himself as an industrious pick-thank 
person concerned with matters of slight and secondary 
importance. But if well conducted such criticism 
has a particular value. As Mr. Bridges says : — 

"If my criticism should seem sometimes harsh, that 
is, I believe, due to its being given in plain terms, a 
manner which I prefer, because by obliging the writer to 
say definitely what he means, it makes his mistakes 
easier to point out, and in this way the true business of 
criticism may be advanced ; nor do I know that, in a 
work of this sort, criticism has any better function than 
to discriminate between the faults and merits of the best 
art : for it commonly happens, when any great artist 



298 



OCTOBER 



comes to be generally admired, that his faults, being 
graced by his excellences, are confounded with them in 
the popular judgment, and being easy of imitation, are 
the points of his work which are most liable to be 
copied." 

Further, Mr. Bridges leaves us in no doubt that he 
considers the Odes to be in many respects the most 
important division of Keats's poetry. " Had Keats," 
he says, "left us only his Odes, his rank among the 
poets would be not lower than it is, for they have 
stood apart in literature, at least the six most 
famous of them." 

These, famous six are : (i) "Psyche," (2) "Melan- 
choly," (3) '' Nightingale," (4) " Grecian Urn," 
(5) " Indolence," (6) " Autumn " ; and Mr. Bridges 
is not content until he has them arranged in a 
hierarchy. He draws up a list in order of merit, and 
in it gives first place — "for its perfection" — to 
" Autumn " : — 

" This is always reckoned among the faultless master- 
pieces of English poetry ; and unless it be objected as a 
slight blemish that the words ' Think not of them ' in 
the second line of the third stanza are somewhat 
awkwardly addressed to a personification of Autumn, I 
do not know that any sort of fault can be found in it." 

But though "Autumn" (i) is best as a whole, the 
■"Nightingale" (2) altogether beats it in splendour 

299 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



and intensity of mood ; and, after pointing out its 
defects, Mr. Bridges confesses, *' I could not name 
any English poem of the same length which contains 
so much beauty as this ode." Still, it takes second 
place, and next comes " Melancholy " (3). " The 
perception in this ode is profound, and no doubt 
experienced"; but in spite of its great beauty *'it 
does not hit so hard as one would expect. I do not ' 
know whether this is due to a false note towards the « 
end of the second stanza, or to a disagreement 
between the second and third stanzas." Next in 
order come " Psyche " (4) and, disputing place with 
it, the " Grecian Urn " (5). " Indolence " (6) closes 
the procession; and I dare say few will dispute her 
title to the last place. 

But with these six odes we must rank {a) the 
fragment of the ^' May Ode," immortal on account 
of the famous passage of inimitable beauty descriptive 
of the Greek poets — 

" ' Leaving great verse unto a little clan.' " — 

and (b) (c) the Odes to *' Pan " and to "Sorrow" 
from " Endymion." Of the latter Mr. Sidney Colvin 
has written : — 

" His later and more famous lyrics, though they ar& 
free from the faults and immaturities which disfigure 
this, yet do not, to my mind at least, show a command 
over such various sources of imaginative and musical 

300 



OCTOBER 

effect, or touch so thrillingly so many chords of the 
spirit. A mood of tender irony and wistful pathos like 
that of the best Elizabethan love-songs ; a sense as 
keen as Heine's of the immemorial romance of India 
and the East ; a power like that of Coleridge, and 
perhaps caught from him, of evoking the remotest weird 
and beautiful associations almost with a word ; clear 
visions of Greek beauty and wild wood-notes of Celtic 
imagination ; all these elements come here commingled, 
yet in a strain perfectly individual." 

With this Mr. Bridges entirely agrees ; but adds : — 

" It unfortunately halts in the opening, and the first 
and fourth stanzas especially are unequal to the rest, as 
is again the third from the end, 'Young Stranger,' which 
for its matter would with more propriety have been cast 
into the previous section ; and these impoverish the 
effect, and contain expressions which might put some 
readers off. If they would begin at the fifth stanza and 
omit the third from the end, they would find little that 
is not admirable." 

Now, for my part, when in book or newspaper 
I come upon references to Isaiah Ixi. 1-3, or 
Shakespeare, K. Henry IV., Pt. ii., Act 4, Sc. 5, 
1. 163, or the like, I have to drop my reading at 
once'jandjhunt them up. So I hope that these 
references of Mr. Bridges will induce the reader to 
take his Keats down from the shelf. And I hope 
further that, having his Keats in hand, the reader 

301 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



will examine these odes again and make out an order 
for himself, as I propose to do. 

* * * * 

Mr. Bridges's order of merit was : (i) " Autumn," 
(2) the " Nightingale," (3) " Melancholy," (4) 
*' Psyche," (5) " Grecian Urn," (6) " Indolence " ; 
leaving us to rank with these (a) the fragment 
of the '' May Ode," and (b) (c) the Odes to 
"Pan" and to '* Sorrow" from " Endymion." 

Now of ''Autumn," to which he gives the first 
place '' for its perfection," one may remark that 
Keats did not entitle it an Ode, and the omission 
may be something more than casual. Certainly its 
three stanzas seem to me to exhibit very little of that 
progression of thought and feeling which I take to be 
one of the qualities of an ode as distinguished from 
an ordinary lyric. The line is notoriously hard to 
draw : but I suppose that in theory the lyric deals 
summarily with its theme, whereas the ode treats it 
in a sustained progressive manner. But sustained 
treatment is hardly possible within the limits of three 
stanzas, and I can discover no progression. The 
first two stanzas elaborate a picture of Autumn ; the 
third suggests a reflection — 

" Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ? 
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too " — 

and promptly, with a few added strokes, all pictorial, 

302 



OCTOBER 

the poet works that reflection into decoration. A 
sonnet could not well be more summary. In fact, 
the poem in structure of thought very closely 
resembles a sonnet ; its first two stanzas correspond- 
ing to the octave, and its last stanza to the sestett. 

This will perhaps be thought very trivial criticism 
of a poem which most people admit to be, as a piece 
of writing, all but absolutely flawless. But allowing 
that it expresses perfectly what it sets out to express, 
I yet doubt if it deserve the place assigned to it by 
Mr. Bridges. Expression counts for a great deal : 
but ideas perhaps count for more. And in the value 
of the ideas expressed I cannot see that "Autumn" 
comes near to rivalling the "Nightingale" (for 
instance) or " Melancholy." The thought that 
Autumn has its songs as well as Spring has neither 
the rarity nor the subtlety nor the moral value of the 
thought that 

" In the very temple of Delight 

Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, 

Though seen of none save him whose strenuous 
tongue 

Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine ; 
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, 
And be among her cloudy trophies hung." 

To test it in another way : — It is perfect, no doubt : 
but it has not the one thing that now and then in 
poetry rises (if I may use the paradox) above 

303 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



perfection. It does not contain, as one or two of the 
Odes contain, what I may call the Great Thrill. It 
nowhere compels that sudden " silent, upon a peak in 
Darien " shiver, that awed surmise of the magic of 
poetry which arrests one at the seventh stanza of the 
" Nightingale " or before the closing lines of 
"Psyche." Such verse as 

*' Perhaps the self- same song hath found a path 

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
The same that oft-times hath 
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn" — 

reaches beyond technical perfection to the very root 
of all tears and joy. Such verse links poetry to Love 

itself— 

" Half angel and half bird. 
And all a wonder and a wild desire." 

The " Ode on a Grecian Urn " does not perhaps 
quite reach this divine thrill : but its second and 
third stanzas have a rapture that comes very near to 
it (I will speak anon of the fourth stanza) ; and I 
should not quarrel with one who preferred these two 
stanzas even to the close of " Psyche." 

Now it seems to me that the mere touching of this 
poetic height — the mere feat of causing this most 
exquisite vibration in the human nerves — gives a 
poem a quality and a rank apart ; a quality and a 

304 



OCTOBER 

rank not secured to " Autumn " by all its excellence 
of expression. I grant, of course, that it takes two 
to produce this thrill— the reader as well as the poet. 
And if any man object to me that he, for his part, 
feels a thrill as poignant when he reads stanza 2 
of " Autumn " as when he reads stanza 7 
of the " Nightingale," then I confess that I shall 
have some difficulty in answering him. But I believe 
very few, if any, will assert this of themselves. And 
perhaps we may get at the truth of men's feelings on 
this point in another way. Suppose that of these 
four poems, " Autumn," " Nightingale," " Psyche," 
and " Grecian Urn," one were doomed to perish, and 
fate allowed us to choose which one should be 
abandoned. Sorrowful as the choice must be, I 
believe that lovers of poetry would find themselves 
least loth to part with "Autumn"; that the loss of 
either of the others would be foreseen as a sharper 
wrench. 

For the others lie close to human emotion ; are 
indeed interpenetrated with emotion ; whereas 
-" Autumn " makes but an objective appeal, chiefly to 
the visual sense. It is, as I have said, a decorative 
picture ; and even so it hardly beats the pictures in 
stanza 4 of the " Grecian Urn "— 

'' What little town by river or sea-shore, 
Or mountain, built with peaceful citadel, 
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn ? " 

305 
21 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



though Keats, to be sure, comes perilously near 
to spoiling these lines by the three answering 
ones — 

''And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return " 

— which, though beautiful in themselves, involve a 
confusion of thought ; since (in Mr. Colvin's words) 
**they speak of the arrest of life as though it were 
an infliction in the sphere of reality, and not merely 
a necessary condition in the sphere of art, having in 
that sphere its own compensations." 

But it is time to be drawing up one's own order 
for the Odes. The first place, then, let us give to the 
" Nightingale," for the intensity of its emotion, for 
the sustained splendour and variety of its language, 
for the consummate skill with which it keeps the 
music matched with the mood, and finally because it 
attains, at least twice, to the '' great thrill." Nor 
can one preferring it offend Mr. Bridges, who 
confesses that he " could not name any English 
poem of the same length which contains so much 
beauty as this ode." 

For the second place, one feels inclined at first to 
bracket " Psyche " with the " Grecian Urn." Each 
develops a beautiful idea. In " Psyche " the poet 
addresses the loveliest but latest-born vision "of all 

306 



OCTOBER 

Olympus's faded hierarchy," and promises her that, 
though born 

" Too late for antique vows, 
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre," 

she shall yet have a priest, the poet, and a temple 
built in some untrodden region of his mind — 

*' And in the midst of this wide quietness 
A rosy sanctuary will I dress 
With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain. 

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name. 
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, 

Who breeding flowers will never breed the same : 
And there shall be for thee all soft delight 

That shadowy thought can win, 
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night. 

To let the warm Love in ! " 

The thought of the '^Grecian Urn" is (to quote Mr. 
Bridges) "the supremacy of ideal art over Nature, 
because of its unchanging expression of perfection." 
And this also is true and beautiful. Idea for idea, 
there is little to choose between the two odes. Each 
has the " great thrill," or something very like it. 
The diction of " Psyche " is more splendid ; the 
mood of the '' Grecian Urn " happier and (I think) 
rarer. But '' Psyche " asserts its superiority in the 
orderly development of its idea, which rises steadily 
to its climax in the magnificent lines quoted above, 
and on that note triumphantly closes : whereas the 

307 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



^* Grecian Urn " marches uncertainly, recurs to its 
main idea without advancing it, reaches something 
hke its cUmax in the middle stanza, and tripping 
over a pun (as Mr. Bridges does not hesitate to call 
■" O Attic shape ! fair attitude ! ") at the entrance of 
the last stanza, barely recovers itself in time to make 
a forcible close. 

(i) '' Nightingale," (2) " Psyche," (3) " Grecian 
Urn." Shall the next place go to '' Melancholy ? " 
The idea of this ode (I contrasted it just now with the 
idea of " Autumn ") is particularly fine ; and when we 
supply the first stanza which Keats discarded we see 
it to be well developed. The discarded stanza lies 
open to the charge of staginess. One may answer that 
Keats meant it to be stagey : that he deliberately 
surrounded the quest of the false Melancholy with 
those paste-board " properties " — the bark of dead 
men's bones, the rudder of a dragon's tail ''long 
severed, yet still hard with agony," the cordage 
woven of large uprootings from the skull of bald 
Medusa" — in order to make the genuine Melancholy 
more effective by contrast.* Yet, as Mr. Bridges 

* The discarded opening stanza ran : — 

"Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones, 

And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast, 
Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans 

To fill it out blood-stained and aghast ; 
Although your rudder be a dragon's tail 

Long-sever'd, yet still hard with agony, 



308 



OCTOBER 

points out, the ode does not hit so hard as one 
would expect : and it has seemed to me that the 
composition of Diirer's great drawing may have 
something to do with this. Dlirer did surround his 
MelanchoHa with " properties," and he did evoke a 
figure which all must admit to be not only tremen- 
dously impressive but entirely genuine, whatever 
Keats may say; a figure so haunting, too, that it 
obtrudes its face between us and Keats' s page and 
scares away his delicate figure of 

" Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
Bidding adieu . . ." — 

reducing him to the pettiness of a Chelsea-china 
shepherd. Mr. Bridges, too, calls attention to a 
false note in the second stanza : — 

" Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, 
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, 
And feed, feed deep upon her peerless eyes." 

So prone was Keats to sound this particular false 
note that Mr. Bridges had to devote some three 
pages of his essay to an examination of the poet's 
want of taste in his speech about women and his 
lack of true insight into human passion. The worst 

Your cordage large uprootings from the skull 
Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail 
To find the Melancholy — whether she 
Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull." 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



trick this disability ever played upon Keats was to 
blind him to his magnificent opportunity in *' Lamia" 
— an opportunity of which the missing is felt as 
positively cruel : but it betrayed him also into 
occasional lapses and ineptitudes which almost rival 
Leigh Hunt's — 

" The two divinest things the world has got — 
A lovely woman in a rural spot." 

This blemish may, perhaps, condemn it to a place 
below "Autumn"; of which (I hope) reason has 
been shown why it cannot rank higher than (4). 
And (6) longo intervallo comes " Indolence," which 
may be fearlessly called an altogether inferior 
performance. 

The " May Ode " stands by itself, an exquisite 
fragment. But the two odes from Endymion may be 
set well above "Indolence," and that to "Sorrow," 
in my opinion, above "Autumn," and only a little 
way behind the leaders. 

ii- -H- % * 

But the fall of the year is marked for us by a 
ceremony more poignant, more sorrowfully season- 
able than any hymned by Hood or by Keats. Let us 

celebrate — 

LAYING UP THE BOAT. 

There arrives a day towards the end of October — 
or with luck we may tide over into November — when 

310 



OCTOBER 

the wind in the mainsail suddenly takes a winter 
force, and we begin to talk of laying up the boat. 
Hitherto we have kept a silent compact and ignored 
all change in the season. We have watched the 
blue afternoons shortening, fading through lilac into 
grey, and let pass their scarcely perceptible warnings. 
One afternoon a few^ kittiwakes appeared. A week 
later the swallows fell to stringing themselves like 
beads along the coastguard's telephone-wire on the 
hill. They vanished, and we pretended not to miss 
them. When our hands grew chill with steering we 
rubbed them by stealth or stuck them nonchalantly 
in our pockets. But this vicious unmistakable winter 
gust breaks the spell. We take one look around the 
harbour, at the desolate buoys awash and tossing ; 
we cast another seaward at the thick weather through 
which, in a week at latest, will come looming the 
earliest of the Baltic merchantmen, our November 
visitors — bluff vessels with red-painted channels, 
green deckhouses, white top-strakes, wooden davits 
overhanging astern, and the Danish flag fluttering 
aloft in the haze. Then we find speech ; and with 
us, as with the swallows, the move into winter 
quarters is not long delayed when once it comes into 
discussion. We have dissembled too long ; and 
know, as we go through the form of debating it, that 
our date must be the next spring-tides. 

This ritual of laying up the boat is our way of 

3" 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



bidding farewell to summer ; and we go through it^ 
when the day comes, in ceremonial silence. Favete 
Unguis ! The hour helps us, for the spring-tides at 
this season reach their height a little after night-fall, 
and it is on an already slackening flood that we cast 
off our moorings and head up the river with our 
backs to the waning sunset. Since we tow a dinghy 
astern and are ourselves towed by the silent yachts- 
man, you may call it a procession. She has been 
stripped, during the last two days, of sails, rigging, 
and all spars but the mainmast. Now we bring her 
alongside the town quay and beneath the shears — 
the abhorred shears — which lift this too out of its 
step, dislocated with a creak as poignant as the cry 
of Polydorus. We lower it, lay it along the deck, 
and resume our way ; past quay doors and windows 
where already the townsfolk are beginning to light 
their lamps; and so by the jetties where foreign crews 
rest with elbows on bulwarks and stare down upon us 
idly through the dusk. She is after all but a little 
cutter of six tons, and we might well apologise, like 
the Athenian, for so diminutive a corpse. But she is our 
own; and they never saw her with jackyarder spread, 
or spinnaker or jib- topsail delicate as samite — those 
heavenly wings ! — nor felt her gallant spirit straining 
to beat her own record before a tense northerly breeze. 
Yet even to them her form, in pure white with gilt 
fillet, might tell of no common obsequies. 

312 



OCTOBER 

For in every good ship the miracle of Galatea is 
renewed ; and the shipwright who sent this keel 
down the ways to her element surely beheld the birth 
of a goddess. He still speaks of her with pride, but 
the conditions of his w^ork keep him a modest man ; 
for he goes about it under the concentred gaze of 
half a dozen old mariners hauled ashore, who haunt 
his yard uninvited, slow of speech but deadly critical.. 
Nor has the language a word for their appalling 
candour. Often, admiring how cheerfully he tolerates 
them, I have wondered what it would feel like to 
compose a novel under the eyes of half a dozen 
reviewers. But to him, as to his critics, the ship 
was a framework only until the terrible moment 
when with baptism she took life. Did he in the 
rapture, the brief ecstasy of creation, realise that she 
had passed from him ? Ere the local artillery band 
had finished "Rule Britannia," and while his friends 
were still shaking his hands and drinking to him, 
did he know his loss in his triumph ? His fate is to 
improve the world, not to possess ; to chase perfection,, 
knowing that under the final mastering touch it must 
pass from his hand; to lose his works and anchor 
himself upon the workmanship, the immaterial 
function. For of art this is the cross and crown in 
one ; and he, modest man, was born to the sad 
eminence. 

She is ours now by purchase, but ours, too, by 

313 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



something better. Like a slave's her beautiful un- 
taught body came to us ; but it was we who gave 
wings to her, and with wings a soul, and a law to its 
grace, and discipline to its vital impulses. She is 
ours, too, by our gratitude, since the delicate machine 

" Has like a woman given up its joy ; " 

and by memories of her helpfulness in such modest 
perils as we tempt, of her sweet companionship 
through long days empty of annoyance — land left be- 
hind with its striving crowds, its short views, its idols 
of the market-place, its sordid worries; the breast flung 
wide to the horizon, swept by wholesome salt airs, 
void perhaps, but so beatifically clean ! Then it was 
that we learned her worth, drinking in the knowledge 
without effort, lulled hour after hour by her whisper- 
ings which asked for no answer, by the pulse of her 
tiller soft against the palm. Patter of reef-points, 
creak of cordage, hum of wind, hiss of brine — I 
think at times that she has found a more human 
language. Who that has ever steered for hours 
together cannot report of a mysterious voice " break- 
ing the silence of the seas," as though a friend were 
standing and speaking astern ? or has not turned 
his head to the confident inexplicable call ? The 
fishermen fable of drowned sailors "hailing their 
names." But the voice is of a single speaker; it 
bears no likeness to the hollow tones of the dead ; 

3H 



OCTOBER 

it calls no name ; it utters no particular word. It 
merely speaks. Sometimes, ashamed at being 
tricked by an illusion so absurd, I steal a glance at 
the yatchsman forward. He is smoking, placidly 
staring at the clouds. Patently he was not the 
speaker, and patently he has heard nothing. Was 
it Cynthia, my dearer shipmate ? She, too, knows 
the voice ; even answered it one day, supposing 
it mine, and in her confusion I surprised our 
common secret. But we never hear it together. 
She is seated now on the lee side of the cockpit, 
her hands folded on the coaming, her chin rested 
on them, and her eyes gazing out beneath the 
sail and across the sea from which they surely 
have drawn their wine-coloured glooms. She has 
not stirred for many minutes. No, it was not 
Cynthia. Then either it must be the wild, 
obedient spirit who carries us, straining at the 
impassable bar of speech, to break through and 
be at one with her master, or else — Can it 
have been Ariel, perched aloft in the shrouds, with 
mischievous harp ? 

" That was the chirp of Ariel 
You heard, as overhead it flew. 
The farther going more to dwell 
And wing our green to wed our blue ; 
But whether note of joy or knell 
Not his own Father-singer knew; 

315 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Nor yet can any mortal tell, 
Save only how it shivers through ; 
The breast of us a sounded shell, 
The blood of us a lighted dew." 

Perhaps ; but for my part I believe it was the ship ; 
and if you deride my belief, I shall guess you one of 
those who need a figure-head to remind them of a 
vessel's sex. There are minds which find, a certain 
romance in figure-heads. To me they seem a frigid, 
unintelligent device, not to say idolatrous. I have 
known a crew to set so much store by one that they 
kept a tinsel locket and pair of ear-rings in the fore- 
castle and duly adorned their darling when in port. 
But this is materialism. The true personality of a 
ship resides in no prefiguring lump of wood with 
a sightless smile to which all seas come alike and all 
weathers. Lay your open palm on the mast, rather,, 
and feel life pulsing beneath it, trembling through 
and along every nerve of her. Are you converted ? 
That life is yours to control. Take the tiller, then, 
and for an hour be a god ! For indeed you shall be a 
god, and of the very earliest. The centuries shall 
run out with the chain as you slip moorings — run 
out and drop from you, plumb, and leave you free, 
winged ! Or if you cannot forget in a moment the 
times to which you were born, each wave shall turn 
back a page as it rolls past to break on the shore 
towards which you revert no glance. Even the 

316 



OCTOBER 



romance of it shall fade with the murmur of that 
coast. 

" Sails of silk and ropes of sendal, 
Such as gleam in ancient lore, 
And the singing of the sailor, 

And the answer from the shore " — 

these shall pass and leave you younger than romance 
— a child open-eyed and curious, pleased to meet a 
sea-parrot or a rolling porpoise, or to watch the 
gannets diving — 

" As Noah saw them dive 
O'er sunken Ararat." 

Yes, and sunset shall bring you, a god, to the gates of 
a kingdom I must pause to describe for you, though 
when you reach it you will forget my description 
and imagine yourself its first discoverer. But that 
is a part of its charm. 

Walter Pater, reading the Odyssey, was brought 
up (as we say) *' with a round turn '* by a passage 
wherein Homer describes briefly and with accuracy 
how some mariners cam.e to harbour, took down sail, 
and stepped ashore. It filled him with wonder that 
so simple an incident — nor to say ordinary — could 
be made so poetical ; and, having pondered it, he 
divided the credit between the poet and his fortunate 
age — a time (said he) in which one could hardly have 
spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors pulled 

317 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



down their boat without making a picture " in the 
great style" against a sky charged with marvels. 

You will discover, when you reach the river-mouth 
of which I am telling, and are swept over the rolling 
bar into quiet water — you will discover (and with 
ease, being a god) that Mr. Pater was entirely 
mistaken, and the credit belongs neither to Homer 
nor to his fortunate age. For here are woods with 
woodlanders, and fields with ploughmen, and beaches 
with fishermen hauling nets; and all these men, as 
they go about their work, contrive to make pictures 
"in the great style" against a sky charged with 
marvels, obviously without any assistance from 
Homer, and quite as if nothing had happened 
for, say, the last three thousand years. That the 
immemorial craft of seafaring has no specially 
"heroic age" — or that, if it have, that age is yours — 
you will discover by watching your own yachtsman 
as he moves about lowering foresail and preparing 
to drop anchor. 

It is a river of gradual golden sunsets, such as 
Wilson painted — a broad-bosomed flood between 
deep and tranquil woods, the main banks holding here 
and there a village as in an arm maternally crook'd, 
but opening into creeks where the oaks dip their 
branches in the high tides, where the stars are 
glassed all night long without a ripple, and where 
you may spend whole days with no company but 



318 



OCTOBER 

herons and sandpipers. Even by the main river 
each separate figure — the fisherman on the shore, the 
ploughman on the upland, the ferryman crossing 
between them — moves slowly upon a large landscape, 
while, permeating all, *' the essential silence cheers 
and blesses." After a week at anchor in the heart of 
this silence Cynthia and I compared notes, and set 
down the total population at fifty souls ; and even so 
she would have it that I had included the owls. Lo ! 
the next morning an unaccustomed rocking awoke 
us in our berths, and, raising the flap of our dew- 
drenched awning, we "descried at sunrise an emerging 
prow " of a peculiarly hideous excursion steamboat. 
She blew no whistle, and we were preparing to laugh 
at her grotesque temerity when we became aware of 
a score of boats putting out towards her from the 
shadowy banks. Like spectres they approached, 
reached her, and discharged their complements, until 
at last a hundred and fifty passengers crowded her 
deck. In silence — or in such silence as a paddle- 
boat can achieve — she backed, turned, and bore them 
away : on what festal errand we never discovered. 
We never saw them return. For aught I know they 
may never have returned. They raised no cheer; 
no band accompanied them; they passed without 
even the faint hum of conversation. In five minutes 
at most the apparition had vanished around the river- 
bend seawards and out of sight. We stared at the 

319 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



gently heaving water, turned, and caught sight of 
Euergetes, his head and red cap above the forecastle 
hatch. (I call our yachtsman Euergetes because 
it is so unlike his real name that neither he nor 
his family "will recognise it.) '' Why, Euergetes," 
exclaimed Cynthia, '' wherever did they all come 
from ? " '' I'm sure I can't tell you, ma'am," he 
answered, ''unless 'twas from the woods" — giving us 
to picture these ardent holiday-makers roosting all 
night in the trees while we slumbered. But the odd 
thing was that the labourers manned the fields that 
day, the fishermen the beach that evening, in un- 
diminished numbers. We landed, and could detect 
no depletion in the village. We landed on subsequent 
days, and discovered no increase. And the inference, 
though easy, was startling. 

I suppose that ''in the great style" could hardly be 
predicated of our housekeeping on these excursions ; 
and yet it achieves, in our enthusiastic opinion, a 
primitive elegance not often recaptured by mortals 
since the passing of the Golden Age. We cook for 
ourselves, but bring a fine spirit of emulation both 
to cuisine and service. We dine frugalty, but the 
claret is sound. From the moment when Euergetes 
awakes us by washing down the deck, and the sound 
of water rushing through the scuppers calls me forth 
to discuss the weather with him, method rules the 
early hours, that we may be free to use the later as 

320 



OCTOBER 

we list. First the cockpit beneath the awning must 
be prepared as a dressing-room for Cynthia ; next 
Euergetes summoned on deck to valet me with the 
simple bucket. And when I am dressed and tingling 
from the douche, and sit me down on the cabin top, 
barefooted and whistling, to clean the boots, and 
Euergetes has been sent ashore for milk and eggs, 
bread and clotted cream, there follows a peaceful 
half-hour until Cynthia flings back a corner of the 
awning and, emerging, confirms the dawn. Then 
begins the business, orderly and thorough, of redding 
up the cabin, stowing the beds, washing out the 
lower deck, folding away the awning, and transform- 
ing the cockpit into a breakfast-room, with table 
neatly set forth. Meanwhile Euergetes has returned, 
and from the forecastle comes the sputter of red 
mullet cooking. Cynthia clatters the cups and 
saucers, while in the well by the cabin door I perform 
some acquired tricks with the new-laid eggs. There 
is plenty to be done on board a small boat, but it is 
all simple enough. Only, you must not let it over- 
take you. Woe to you if it fall into arrears ! 

By ten o'clock or thereabouts we have breakfasted, 
my pipe is lit, and a free day lies before us — 

*' All the wood to ransack, 
All the wave explore." 

We take the dinghy and quest after adventures. 

321 

22 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 

The nearest railway lies six miles off, and is likely 
to deposit no one in whom we have the least 
concern. The woods are deep, we carry our lunch- 
basket and may roam independent of taverns. If 
the wind invite, we can hoist our small sail ; if not, 
we can recline and drift and stare at the heavens, or 
land and bathe, or search in vain for curlews' or 
kingfishers' nests, or in more energetic moods seek 
out a fisherman and hire him to shoot his seine. 
Seventy red mullet have I seen fetched at one haul 
out of those delectable waters, remote and enchanted 
as the lake whence the fisherman at the genie's 
orders drew fish for the young king of the Black 
Isles. But such days as these require no filling, and 
why should I teach you how to fill them ? 

Best hour of all perhaps is that before bed-time, 
when the awning has been spread once more, and 
after long hours in the open our world narrows to 
the circle of the reading-lamp in the cockpit. Our 
cabin is prepared. Through the open door we see 
its red curtain warm in the light of the swinging 
lamp, the beds laid, the white sheets turned back. 
Still we grudge these moments to sleep. Outside we 
hear the tide streaming seawards, light airs play 
beneath the awning, above it rides the host of 
heaven. And here, gathered into a few square feet, 
we have home — larder, cellar, library, tables, and 
cupboards ; life's small appliances with the human 

322 



OCTOBER 

comradeship they serve, chosen for their service after 
severely practical discussion, yet ultimately by the 
heart's true nesting-instinct. We are isolated, bound 
even to this strange river-bed by a few fathoms of 
chain only. To-morrow we can lift anchor and 
spread wing ; but we carry home with us. 

" I will make you brooches and toys for your delight 
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night; 
I will make a palace fit for you and me 
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. 

I will make my kitchen and you shall keep your room 
Where white flows the river and bright blows the 

broom ; 
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body 

white 
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night." 

You see now what memories we lay up with the boat. 
Will you think it ridiculous that after such royal 
days of summer, her inconspicuous obsequies have 
before now put me in mind of Turner's " Fighting 
Temeraire " ? I declare, at any rate, that the fault 
lies not with me, but with our country's painters and 
poets for providing no work of art nearer to my 
mood. We English have a great seafaring and a 
great poetical past. Yet the magic of the sea and 
shipping has rarely touched our poetry, and for its 
finest expression we must still turn to an art in 
which as a race we are less expert, and stand before 

323 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



that picture of Turner's in the National Gallery. 
The late Mr. Froude believed in a good time coming 
when the sea-captains of Elizabeth are to find their 
bard and sit enshrined in ** a great English national 
epic as grand as the Odyssey.'' It may be, but as yet 
our poets have achieved but a few sea-fights, marine 
adventures, and occasional pieces, which wear a 
spirited but accidental look, and suggest the excur- 
sionist. On me, at any rate, no poem in our language 
— not even The Ancient Mariner — binds as that 

picture binds, the 

" Mystic spell, 
Which none but sailors know or feel, 
And none but they can tell " — 

if indeed they can tell. In it Turner seized and 
rolled together in one triumphant moment the 
emotional effect of noble shipping and a sentiment 
as ancient and profound as the sea itself — human 
regret for transitory human glory. The great war- 
ship, glimmering in her Mediterranean fighting-paint, 
moving like a queen to execution ; the pert and 
ignoble tug, itself an emblem of the new order, 
eager, pushing, ugly, and impatient of the slow 
loveliness it supersedes ; the sunset hour, closing 
man's labour ; the fading river-reach — you may call 
these things obvious, but all art's greatest effects are 
obvious when once genius has discovered them. I 
should know well enough by this time what is 

324 



OCTOBER 

coming when I draw near that picture, and yet my 
heart never fails to leap with the old wild wonder. 
There are usually one or two men standing before it 
— I observe that it affects women less — and I glance 
at them furtively to see how they take it. If ever I 
surprise one with tears in his eyes, I believe we shall 
shake hands. And why not ? For the moment we 
are not strangers, but men subdued by the wonder 
and sadness of our common destiny : " \ve feel that 
we are greater than we know." We are two English- 
men, in one moment realising the glories of our blood 
and state. We are alone together, gazing upon a 
new Pacific, '' silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

For — and here lies his subtlety — in the very flush 
of amazement the painter flatters you by whispering 
that for you has his full meaning been reserved. The 
Tem^raire goes to her doom unattended, twilit, 
obscure, with no pause in the dingy bustle of the 
river. You alone have eyes for the passing of 
greatness, and a heart to feel it. 

" There 's a far bell ringing," 

but you alone hear it tolling to evensong, to the 
close of day, the end of deeds. 

So, as we near the beach where she is to lie, a 
sense of proud exclusiveness mingles with our high 
regret. Astern the jettymen and stevedores are 
wrangling over their latest job ; trains are shunting, 

325 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



cranes working, trucks discharging their cargoes 
amid clouds of dust. We and we only assist at 
""he passing of a goddess. Euergetes rests on his 
oars, the tow-rope slackens, she glides into the deep 
shadow of the shore, and with a soft grating noise — 
ah, the eloquence of it ! — takes ground. Silently we 
carry her chain out and noose it about a monster elm ; 
silently we slip the legs under her channels, lift and 
make fast her stern moorings, lash the tiller for the 
last time, tie the coverings over cabintop and well ; 
anxiously, with closed lips, praetermitting no due 
rite. An hour, perhaps, passes, and November dark- 
ness has settled on the river ere we push off our 
boat, in a last farewell committing her — our treasure 
" locked up, not lost " — to a winter over which Jove 
shall reign genially 

" Et fratres Helenae, lucida sidera." 

As we thread our dim way homeward among the 
riding-lights flickering on the black water, the last 
pale vision of her alone and lightless follows and 
reminds me of the dull winter ahead, the short days, 
the long nights. She is haunting me yet as I land 
on the wet slip strewn with dead leaves to the tide's 
edge. She follows me up the hill, and even to my 
library door. I throw it open, and lo ! a bright fire burn- 
ing, and, smiling over against the blaze of it, cheerful, 
companionable, my books have been awaiting me. 

326 



N 



ovemoer 



hi 



II HLL the reader forgive, this month, a somewhat 
^ * more serious gossip ? 

In my childhood I used to spend long holidays 
with my grandparents in Devonshire, and afterwards 
lived with them for a while when the shades of the 
prison-house began to close and I attended my 
first " real " school as a day-boy. I liked those 
earlier visits best, for they were holidays, and I had 
great times in the hayfields and apple orchards, and 
rode a horse, and used in winter-time to go shooting 
with my grandfather and carry the powder-flask 
and shot-flask for his gun — an old muzzle-loader. 
Though stern in his manner, he was (as I grew to 
learn) extraordinarily, even extravagantly, kind; and 
my grandmother lived for me, her eldest grandchild. 
Years afterwards I gathered that in the circle of 
her acquaintance she passed for a satirical, slightly 
imperious, lady: and I do seem to remember that 
she suffered fools with a private reserve of mirth. 
Eut she loved her own with a thoroughness which 

327 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



extended — good housewife that she was — down to 
the last small office. 

In short, here were two of the best and most 
affectionate grandparents in the world, who did 
what they knew to make a child happy all the 
week. But in religion they were strict evangelicals, 
and on Sunday they took me to public worship and 
acquainted me with Hell. From my eighth to my 
twelfth year I lived on pretty close terms with 
Hell, and would wake up in the night and lie awake 
with the horror of it upon me. Oddly enough, I 
had no very vivid fear for myself — or if vivid it was 
but occasional and rare. Little pietistic humbug 
that I was, I fancied myself among the elect : but 
I had a desperate assurance that both my parents, 
were damned, and I loved them too well to find the 
conviction bearable. To this day I wonder what 
kept me from tackling my father on the state of his 
soul. The result would have been extremely salutary 
for me : for he had an easy sense of humour, a depth 
of conviction of his own which he united with limit- 
less tolerance, and a very warm affection for his 
mother-in-law. Let it suffice that I did not : but 
for two or three years at least my childhood was 
tormented with visions of Hell derived from the 
pulpit and mixed up with tw^o terrible visions derived 
from my reading — the ghost of an evil old woman 
in red-heeled slippers from Sir Walter Scott's story,. 



328 



NOVEMBER 



The Tapestried Room, and a jumble of devils from 
a chapter of Samuel Warren's Diary of a Late 
Physician. I had happened on these horrors among 
the dull contents of my grandfather's book-case. 

For three or four years these companions — the 
vision of Hell particularly and my parents in it — 
murdered my childish sleep. Then, for no reason 
that I can give any account of, it all faded, and boy 
or man I have never been troubled at all by Hell or 
the fear of it. 

The strangest part of the whole affair is that no 
priest, from first to last, has ever spoken to me in 
private of any life but this present one, or indeed 
about religion at all. I suppose there must be some 
instinct in the sacerdotal mind which warns it off 
certain cases as hopeless from the first . . . and 
yet I have always been eager to discuss serious 
things with the serious. 

There has been no great loss, though — apart from 
the missing of sociableness — if one may judge the 
arguments that satisfy my clerical friends from the 
analogies they use in the pulpit. The subject of a 
future life is one, to be sure, which can hardly be 
discussed without resort to analogy. But there are 
good and bad analogies, and of all bad ones that 
which grates worst upon the nerves of a man who 
will have clear thinking (to whatever it lead him) 
is the common one of the seed and the flower. 



329 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



'' The flowers that we behold each year 
In chequer'd meads their heads to rear, 

New rising from the tomb ; 
The eglantines and honey daisies, 
And all those pretty smiling faces 
That still in age grow young — 
Even those do cry 
That though men die, 
Yet life from death may come," 

wrote John Hagthorpe in verses v^hich generations 
of British schoolboys have turned into Latin 
alcaics ; and how often have we not "sat under" 
this argument in church at Easter or when the 
preacher was improving a Harvest Festival ? 
Examine it, and you see at once that the argument 
is not in pari materia ; that all the true correspond- 
ence between man and the flower-seed begins and 
ends in this world. As the seed becomes a plant, 
blossoms and leaves the seeds of other flowers, so of 
seed man is begotten, flourishes and dies, leaving his 
seed behind him — all in this world. The "seed" 
argument makes an illicit jump from one world to 
another after all its analogies have been met and 
satisfied on this side of the grave. If flowers went 
to heaven and blossomed there (which is possible 
indeed, but is not contended) it might be cogent. 
As things are, one might as validly reason from 
the man to prove that flowers go to heaven, as 
from the flower to prove that man goes thither. 

330 



NOVEMBER 



St. Paul (as I do not forget) uses the similitude 
of the seed : but his argument is a totally different 
one. St. Paul bids us not be troubled in what 
form the dead shall be raised; for as we sow '*not 
the body that shall be, but bare grain, it may 
chance of wheat or of some other grain," so God 
will raise the dead in what form it pleases Him : 
in other words, he tells us that since bare grain 
may turn into such wonderful and wonderfully 
different things as wheat, barley, oats, rye, in this 
world, we need not marvel that bare human bodies 
planted here should be raised in wonderful form 
hereafter. Objections may be urged against this 
illustration : I am only concerned to point out that 
it illustrates an argument entirely different from 
the common pulpit one, which (I suspect) we should 
have to endure far less frequently were it our 
custom to burn our dead, and did not interment 
dig a trap for facile rhetoric. 

Further, St. Paul's particular warning, if it do 
not consciously contain, at least suggests, a general 
warning against interpreting the future life in terms 
of this one, whereas its delights and pains can 
have little or nothing in common with ours. We 
try to imagine them by expanding or exaggerating 
and perpetuating ours — or some of them; but the 
attempt is demonstrably foolish, and leads straight 
to its ow^n defeat. It comes of man's incapacity 

331 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



to form a conception of Eternity, or at any rate 
to grasp and hold it long enough to reason about 
it ; by reason of which incapacity he falls back 
upon the easier, misleading conception of " Ever- 
lasting Life." In Eternity time is not : a man 
dies into it to-day and awakes (say) yesterday, for 
in Eternity yesterday and to-day and to-morrow 
are one, and ten thousand years is as one day. 
This vacuum of time you may call '' Everlasting 
Life," but it clearly differs from what men ordinarily 
and almost inevitably understand by ^' Everlasting 
Life," which to them is an endless prolongation of 
time. Therefore, when they imagine heaven as 
consisting of an endless prolongation and exaggera- 
tion or rarefication of such pleasures as we know, 
they invite the retort, "And pray what would 
become of any one of our known pleasures, or 
even of our conceivable pleasures, if it were made 
everlasting ? " As Jowett asked, with his usual dry 
sagacity, in his Introduction to the Phcedo — 

" What is the pain that does not become deadened 
after a thousand years ? or what is the nature of that 
pleasure or happiness which never wearies by monotony ? 
Earthly pleasures and pains are short in proportion as 
they are keen ; of any others which are both intense and 
lasting we have no experience and can form no idea. . . . 
To beings constituted as we are the monotony of singing 
psalms would be as great an affliction as the pains of 

332 



NOVEMBER 



hell, and might even be pleasantly interrupted by 
them." 

This is trenchant enough, and yet we perceive 
that the critic is setting up his rest upon the very 
fallacy he attacks — the fallacy of using " Eternity " 
and *' Everlasting Life " as convertible terms. He 
neatly enough reduces to absurdity the prolongation, 
through endless time, of pleasures which delight us 
because they are transitory : he does not see, or 
for the moment forgets, that Eternity is not a pro- 
longation of time at all, but an absolute negation of it. 
There seems to be no end to the confusion of 
men's thought on this subject. Take, for example, 
this extract from our late Queen's private journal 
<i883) :- 

"After luncheon saw the great poet Tennyson in 
dearest Albert's room for nearly an hour; and most 
interesting it was. He is grown very old, his eyesight 
much impaired. But he was very kind. Asked him to 
sit down. He talked of many friends he had lost, and 
what it would be if he did not feel and know that there 
was another world where there would be no partings : 
and then he spoke with horror of the unbelievers and 
philosophers who would make you believe that there 
was no other world, no immortality, who tried to explain 
all away in a miserable manner. We agreed that, were 
such a thing possible, God, who is Love, would be far 
more cruel than any human being." 

333 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



It was, no doubt, a touching and memorable 
interview — these two, aged and great, meeting at a 
point of life when grandeur and genius alike feel 
themselves to be lonely, daily more lonely, and 
exchanging beliefs upon that unseen world where 
neither grandeur nor genius can plead more than that 
they have used their gifts for good. And yet was not 
Tennyson yielding to the old temptation to interpret 
the future life in terms of this one ? Speculation 
will not carry us far upon this road; yet, so far as 
we can, let us carry clear thinking with us. 
Cruelty implies the infliction of pain : and there 
can be no pain without feeling. What cruelty, 
then, can be inflicted on the dead, if they have 
done with feeling ? Or what on the living, if they 
live in a happy delusion and pass into nothingness 
without discovering the cheat ? Let us hold most 
firmly that there has been no cheat ; but let us 
also be reasonable and admit that, if cheat there 
be, it cannot also be cruel, since everything that 
would make it a cheat would also blot out com- 
pletely all chance of discovery, and therefore all 
pain of discovering. 



This is a question on which, beyond pleading that 
what little we say ought to be (but seldom is) the 
result of clear thinking, I propose to say little, not 

334 



NOVEMBER 



only because here is not the place for metaphysics, 
but because — to quote Jowett again — "considering 
the * feebleness of the human faculties and the 
uncertainty of the subject,' we are inclined to 
believe that the fewer our words the better. At 
the approach of death there is not much said : 
good men are too honest to go out of the world 
professing more than they know. There is perhaps 
no important subject about which, at any time, even 
rehgious people speak so little to one another." 

I would add that, in my opinion, many men fall 
into this reticence because as they grow older the 
question seems to settle itself without argument, 
and they cease by degrees to worry themselves 
about it. It dies in sensible men almost insensibly 
with the death of egoism. At twenty we are all 
furious egoists; at forty 'or thereabouts — and especi- 
ally if we have children, as at forty every man 
ought — our centre of gravity has completely shifted. 
We care a great deal about what happens to the 
next generation, we care something about our work, 
but about ourselves and what becomes of us in the 
end I really think we care very little. By this time, 
if we have taken account of ourselves, ourselves are 
by no means so splendidly interesting as they used 
to be, but subjects rather of humorous and charitable 
comprehension. 

Of all the opening passages in Plato — master 

335 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



of beautiful openings — I like best that of the Laws. 
The scene is Crete ; the season, midsummer ; 
and on the long dusty road between Cnosus and 
the cave and temple of Zeus the three persons of 
the dialogue — strangers to one another, but bound 
on a common pilgrimage — join company and fall 
into converse together. One is an Athenian, one a 
Cretan, the third a Lacedaemonian, and all are 
elderly. Characteristically, the invitation to talk 
comes from the Athenian. 

" It will pass the time pleasantly," he suggests ; " for 
I am told that the distance from Cnosus to the cave and 
temple of Zeus is considerable, and doubtless there are 
shady places under the lofty trees which will protect us 
from the scorching sun. Being no longer young, we 
may often stop to rest beneath them, and get over the 
whole journey without difficulty, beguiling the time by 
■conversation." 

*' Yes, Stranger," answers Cleinias the Cretan, " and if 
we proceed onward we shall come to groves of cypresses, 
which are of rare height and beauty, and there are green 
meadows in which we may repose and converse." 

"Very good." 

'* Very good indeed ; and still better when we see 
them. Let us move on cheerily." 

So, now walking, anon pausing in the shade to 
rest, the three strangers beguile their journey, which 
(as the Athenian was made, by one of Plato's cunning 

336 



NOVEMBER 



touches, to foresee) is a long one; and the dialogue, 
moving with their deliberate progress, extends to a . 
length which no doubt in the course of some 2,300 
years has frightened away many thousands of general 
readers. Yet its slow amplitude, when you come 
to think of it, is appropriate; for these elderly men 
are in no hurry, although they have plenty to talk 
about, especially on the subjects of youth and 
religion. "They have," says Jowett, *'the feelings 
of old age about youth, about the state, about 
human things in general. Nothing in life seems to 
be of much importance to them : they are spectators 
rather than actors, and men in general appear to 
the Athenian speaker to be the playthings of the 
gods and of circumstances. Still they have a 
fatherly care of the young, and are deeply impressed 
by sentiments of religion. . . ." 

"Human affairs," says the Athenian, "are hardly 
worth considering in earnest, and yet we must be in 
earnest about them — a sad necessity constrains us. . . . 
And so I say that about serious matters a man should 
be serious, and about a matter which is not serious he 
should not be serious ; and that God is the natural 
and worthy object of our most serious and blessed 
endeavours. For man, as I said before, is made to be the 
plaything of God, and this, truly considered, is the best of 
him ; wherefore also every man and woman should walk 
seriously and pass life in the noblest of pastimes, and 
be of another mind from what they are at present." 

337 
23 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



But on the subject of youth, too, our Athenian 
is anxiously, albeit calmly, serious : and especially 
on the right education of youth, '*for," says he, 
"many a victory has been and will be suicidal ta 
the victors; but education is never suicidal," By 
education he explains himself to mean — 

" that education in virtue from youth upwards which 
makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of 
citizenship, and teaches him how rightly to rule and 
how to obey. This is the only education which, upon 
our view, deserves the name ; and that other sort of 
training which aims at the acquisition of wealth or 
bodily strength, or mere cleverness apart from intelli- 
gence and justice is mean and illiberal, and is not 
worthy to be called education at all." 

Plato wrote this dialogue when over seventy, an 
age which for many years (if I live) I shall be 
able to contemplate as respectable. Yet, though 
speaking at a guess, I say pretty confidently that 
the talk of these three imaginary interlocutors of 
his upon youth, and the feeling that colours it, 
convey more of the truth about old age than does 
Cicero's admired treatise on that subject or any 
of its descendants. For these treatises start with 
the false postulate that age is concerned about 
itself, whereas it is the mark of age to be indifferent 
about itself, and this mark of indifference deepens with 
the years. Nor did Cicero once in his De Senectute get 

338 



NOVEMBER 



hold of SO fine or so true a thought as Plato's Athenian 
lets fall almost casually — that a man should honour 
an aged parent as he would the image of a God 
treasured up and dwelling in his house. 

The outlook of Plato's three elderly men, in fact, 
differs little, if at all, from Mr. Meredith's, as you 
may see for yourself by turning back to the foot 
of p. 272 of this book and reading the two or 
three pages which follow it. Speaking as a parent, 
I say that this outlook is — I won't say the right 
one, though this too I believe — the outlook a man 
naturally takes as he grows older : naturally, because 
it is natural for a man to have children, and he 
who has none may find alleviations, but must miss 
the course of nature. As I write there comes back 
to me the cry of my old schoolmaster, T. E. Brown, 
protesting from the grave — 

" But when I think if we must part 

And all this personal dream be fled — 

O, then my heart ! O, then my useless heart ! 
Would God that thou wert dead — 

A clod insensible to joys or ills — 

A stone remote in some bleak gully of the hills ! " 

I hear the note of anguish : but the appeal itself 
passes me by. *' All this personal dream " must 
flee : it is better that it should flee ; nay, much of 
our present bhss rests upon its transitoriness. But 
we can continue in the children. 

339 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



I think that perhaps the worst of having no 
children of their own is that t makes, or tends to 
make, men and women indifferent to children in 
general. I know, to be sure, that thousands of 
childless men and women reach out (as it were) 
wistfully, almost passionately towards the young. 
Still, I know numbers who care nothing for children, 
regard them as nuisances, and yet regard themselves 
as patriots — though of a state which presumably is 
to disappear in a few years, and with their acqui- 
escence. I own that a patriotism which sets up no 
hope upon its country's continuous renewal and 
improvement, or even upon its survival beyond 
the next few years, seems to me as melancholy 
as it is sterile. 

Some of these good folk, for example, play the piano 
more sedulously than that instrument, in my opinion, 
deserves; yet are mightily indignant, in talk with 
me, at what they call the wickedness of teaching 
multitudes of poor children to play up'on pianos pro- 
vided by the rates. As a historical fact, very few poor 
children play or have ever played on pianos provided 
by the rates. But I prefer, passing this correction 
over, to point out to my indignant friends that the 
upper and middle classes in England are ceasing to 
breed, and that therefore, unless the Anglo-Saxon 
race is to lose one of its most cherished accomplish- 
ments — unless we are content to live and see our 

340 



NOVEMBER 



national music ultimately confined to the jews* harp 
and penny whistle — we must endow the children of 
the poor with pianos — or perhaps as ^Mabour certifi- 
cates" abbreviate the years at our disposal for 
instruction, with pianolas, and so realise the American 
sculptor's grand allegorical conception of " Freedom 
presenting a Pianola to Fisheries and the Fine Arts." 



To drop irony — and indeed I would expel it, if 
I could, once and for all from these pages — I like 
recreation as much as most men, and have grown 
to find it in the dull but deeply absorbing business 
of sitting on Education Committees. Some fifteen 
years ago, in the first story in my first book of 
short stories, I confessed to being haunted by a 
dreadful sound : " the footfall of a multitude more 
terrible than an army with banners, the ceaseless 
pelting feet of children — of Whittingtons turning 
and turning again." Well, I still hear that footfall : 
but it has become less terrible to me, though not 
one whit less insistent : and it began to grow less 
terrible from the hour I picked up and read a certain 
little book, The Invisible Playmate, to the author of 
which (Mr. William Canton) I desire here to tender 
my thanks. In a little chapter of that little book 
Mr. Canton tells of an imaginary poem written by 
an imaginary Arm. (Arminius ?), Altegans, an elderly 

341 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



German cobbler of "the village of Wieheisstes, in 
the pleasant crag-and-fir region of Schlaraffenland." 
Its name is the " Erster Schulgang," and I will 
own, and gratefully, that few real poems by real 
*' classics " have so sung themselves into my ears, 
or so shamed the dulness out of drudgery, as have 
the passages which I here set down for the mere 
pleasure of transcribing them : — 

" The poem opens with a wonderful vision of children ; 
delightful as it is unexpected ; as romantic in present- 
ment as it is commonplace in fact. All over the world 
— and all under it, too, when their time comes — the 
children are trooping to school. The great globe swings 
round out of the dark into the sun ; there is always 
morning somewhere ; and for ever in this shifting region 
of the morning-light the good Altegans sees the little 
ones afoot — shining companies and groups, couples, and 
bright solitary figures ; for they all seem to have a soft 
heavenly light about them ! 

" He sees them in country lanes and rustic villages ; on 
lonely moorlands, where narrow, brown foot-tracks thread 
the expanse of green waste, and occasionally a hawk 
hovers overhead, or the mountain ash hangs its scarlet 
berries above the huge fallen stones set up by the Druids 
in the old days ; he sees them on the hill-sides, in the 
woods, on the stepping-stones that cross the brook in the 
glen, along the sea-cliffs and on the wet ribbed sands; 
tresspassing on the railway lines, making short cuts 
through the corn, sitting in ferry-boats : he sees them 
in the crowded streets of smoky cities, in small rocky 

342 



NOVEMBER 



islands, in places far inland where the sea is known only 
as a strange tradition. 

" The morning-side of the planet is alive with them ; 
one hears their pattering footsteps everywhere. And as 
the vast continents sweep ' eastering out of the high 
shadow which reaches beyond the moon,' and as new 
nations -yvith their cities and villages, their fields, woods, 
mountains, and sea-shores, rise up into the morning-side, 
lo ! fresh troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again 
fresh troops of 'these small school-going children of 
the dawn.' . . . 

** What are weather and season to this incessant 
panorama of childhood ? The pigmy people trudge 
through the snow on moor and hill-side; wade down 
flooded roads; are not to be daunted by wind or rain, 
frost or the white smother of ' millers and bakers at 
fisticuffs.' Most beautiful of all, he sees them travelling 
schoolward by that late moonlight which now and 
again in the winter months precedes the tardy dawn." 

My birthday falls in November month. Here, 
behind this Cornish window, we are careful in our 
keeping of birthdays ; we observe them solemnly, 
stringent in our cheerful ritual ; — and this has been 
my birthday sermon ! 



343 



D 



ecember 



TTARD by the edge of the sand-hills, and close 
A A beside the high road on the last rise before it 
dips to the coast, stands a turfed embankment 
surrounded by a shallow fosse. This is none of 
our ancient camps (" castles " we call them in 
Cornwall), as you perceive upon stepping within the 
enclosure, which rises in a complete circle save for 
two entrances cut through the bank and facing one 
another. You are standing in a perfectly level area 
a hundred and thirty feet in diameter ; the surround- 
ing rampart rises to a height of eight or nine feet, 
narrowing towards the top, where it is seven feet 
wide ; and around its inner side you may trace seven > 
or eight rows of seats cut in the turf, but now almost 
obliterated by the grass. 

This Round (as we call it) was once an open-air 
theatre or planguary (plain-an-guare, place of the 
play). It has possibly a still older history, and may 
have been used by the old Cornish for their councils 
and rustic sports ; but we know that it was used as 
a theatre, perhaps as early as the fourteenth century, 
certainly as late as the late sixteenth : and, what is 

344 



DECEMBER 

more, we have preserved for us some of the plays 
performed in it. 

They are sacred or miracle plays, of course. If 
you draw a line from entrance to entrance, then at 
right angles to it there runs from the circumference 
towards the centre of the area a straight shallow 
trench, terminating in a spoon-shaped pit. The 
trench is now a mere depression not more than a 
foot deep, the pit three feet : but doubtless time has 
levelled them up, and there is every reason to suppose 
that the pit served to represent Hell (or, in the drama 
of The Resurrection, the Grave), and the trench 
allowed the performers, after being thrust down into 
perdition, to regain the green-room unobserved — 
either actually unobserved, the trench being covered, 
or by a polite fiction, the audience pretending not to 
see. My private belief is that, the stage being erected 
above and along the trench, they were actually hidden 
while they made their exit. Where the trench meets 
the rampart a semi-circular hollow, about ten feet in 
diameter, makes a breach in the rows of seats. 
Here, no doubt, stood the green-room. 

The first notice of the performance of these plays 
occurs in Carew's Survey of Cornwall, published in 
1602 : — 

" Pastimes to delight the mind, the Cornishmen have 
guary miracles and three- men's songs : and for exercise 

345 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



of the body hunting, hawking, shooting, wrestling, 
hurling, and such other games. 

*'The guary miracle, in English a miracle play, is a 
kind of Interlude compiled in Cornish out of some 
scripture history with that grossness which accompanied 
the Romans' vetus comedia. For representing it they raise 
an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, having the 
diameter of his inclosed plain some forty or fifty foot. 
The country people flock from all sides, many miles off, 
to hear and see it ; for they have therein devils and 
devices to delight as well the eye as the ear ; the players 
con not their parts without book, but are prompted by 
one called the Ordinary, who followeth at their back 
with the book in his hand and telleth them softly what 
they must pronounce aloud." 

Our Round, you observe, greatly exceeds the 
dimensions given by Carew. But there were several 
in the west : one for instance, traceable fifty years 
ago, at the northern end of the town of Redruth, 
which still keeps the name of Planguary; and 
another magnificent one, of stone, near the church- 
town of St. Just by the Land's End. Carew may 
have seen only the smaller specimens. 

As for the plays — well, they are by no means 
masterpieces of literature, yet they reveal here and 
there perceptions of beauty such as go with sincerity 
even though it be artless. Beautiful for instance is 
the idea, if primitive the writing, of a scene in one, 
Origo Mundiy where Adam, bowed with years, sends 



346 



DECEMBER 



his son Seth to the gate of Paradise to beg his 
release from the weariness of Hving (I quote from 
Norris's translation) : — 

" O dear God, I am weary, 
Gladly would I see once 

The time to depart. 
Strong are the roots of the briars, 
That my arms are broken 

Tearing up many of them. 
*' Seth my son I will send 
To the gate of Paradise forthwith, 

To the Cherub, the guardian. 
Ask him if there will be for me 
Oil of mercy at the last 

From the Father, the God of Grace." 

Seth answers that he does not know the road to 
Paradise. '* Follow," says Adam — 

" Follow the prints of my feet, burnt ; 
No grass or flower in the world grows 
In that same road where I went — 

I and thy Mother surely also — 

Thou wilt see the tokens," 

Fine too is the story, in the Passio Domini Nostri, 
of the blind soldier Longius, who is led forward and 
given a lance, to pierce Christ's body on the Cross. 
He thrusts and the holy blood heals him of his 
blindness. Local colour is sparingly imported. One 

347 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



of the executioners, as he bores the Cross, says 
boastfully : — 

" I will bore a hole for the one hand, 
There is not a fellow west of Hayle 
Who can bore better." 

— and in the Resurrectio Pilate rewards the gaoler for 
his trustiness with the Cornish manors of "Fekenal, 
Carvenow and Merthyn," and promises the soldiers 
by the Sepulchre "the plain of Dansotha and Barrow 
Heath." A simplicity scarcely less refreshing is 
exhibited in The Life of St. Meriasec (a play recently 
recovered) by a scholar whom a pompous pedagogue 
is showing off. He says : — 

" God help A, B, and C ! 
The end of the song is D : 
No more is known to me," 

but promises to learn more after dinner. 



Enthusiasts beg us to make the experiment of 
"reviving" these old plays in their old surroundings. 
But here I pause, while admitting the temptation. 
One would like to give life again, if only for a day, 
to the picture which Mr. Norris conjures up : — 

" The bare granite plain of St. Just, in view of Cape 
Cornwall and of the transparent sea which beats 

348 



DECEMBER 

against that magnificent headland. . . . The mighty 
gathering of people from many miles around hardly 
showing like a crowd in that extended region, where 
nothing ever grows to limit the view on any side, with 
their booths and tents, absolutely necessary where so 
many people had to remain three days on the spot, 
would give a character to the assembly probably more 
like what we hear of the so-called religious revivals in 
America than of anything witnessed in more sober 
Europe." 

But alas ! I foresee the terrible unreality which 
would infect the whole business. Very pretty, no 
doubt, and suggestive would be the picture of the 
audience arrayed around the turf benches — 

" In gradibus sedit populus de cespite factis" — 

but one does not want an audience to be acting; 
and this audience would be making-believe even 
more heroically than the actors — that is, if it took 
the trouble to be in earnest at all. For the success 
of the experiment would depend on our reconstructing 
the whole scene — the ring of entranced spectators as 
well as the primitive show; and the country-people 
would probably, and not entirely without reason, 
regard the business as " a stupid old May game." 
The only spectators properly impressed would be a 
handful of visitors and solemn antiquarians. I can 
see those visitors. If it has ever been your lot to 
witness the performance of a "literary" play in 

349 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



London and cast an eye over the audience it 
attracts, you too will know them and their stigmata 
— their ineffable attire, their strange hirsuteness, 
their air of combining instruction with amusement, 
their soft felt hats indented along the crown. No ! 
We may, perhaps, produce new religious dramas in 
these ancient Rounds : decidedly we cannot revive 
the old ones. 

* * * * 

While I ponder these things, standing in the 
deserted Round, there comes to me — across the sky 
where the plovers wheel and flash in the wintry 
sunshine — the sound of men's voices carolling at an 
unseen farm. They are singing The First Nowell; but 
the fourth Nowell — the fourth of the refrain — is the 
clou of that most common, most excellent carol, and 
gloriously the tenors and basses rise to it. No, we 
cannot revive the old Miracle Plays : but here in the 
Christmas Carols we have something as artlessly 
beautiful which we can still preserve, for with them 
we have not to revive, but merely to preserve, the 

conditions. 

* * * # 

In a preface to a little book of carols chosen (and 
with good judgment) some years ago by the Rev. H. 
R. Bramley, of Magdalen College, Oxford, and well 
edited in the matter of music by Sir John Stainer^ 
I read that — 

350 



DECEMBER 



" The time-honoured and delightful custom of thus 
celebrating the Birthday of the Holy Child seems, with 
some change of form, to be steadily and rapidly gaining 
ground. Instead of the itinerant ballad-singer, or the 
little bands of wandering children, the practice of singing 
carols in Divine Service, or by a full choir at some fixed 
meeting, is becoming prevalent." 

Since Mr. Bramley wrote these words the practice 
has grown more prevalent, and the shepherds of 
Bethlehem are in process of becoming thoroughly 
sophisticated and self-conscious. For that is what 
it means. You may (as harassed bishops will admit) 
do a number of irrelevant things in church, but 
you cannot sing the best carols there. You cannot 
toll in your congregation, seat your organist at the 
organ, array your full choir in surplices, and tune up 
to sing, for example — 

** Rise up, rise up, brother Dives, 
And come along with me ; 
There 's a place in Hell prepared for you 
To sit on the serpent's knee." 



Or this- 



Or this- 



' In a manger laid and wrapped I was — 
So very poor, this was my chance — 
Between an ox and a silly poor ass, 
To call my true love to the dance." 



351 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



''Joseph did whistle and Mary did sing, 
And all the bells on earth did ring 
'>. On Christmas Day in the morning." 

These are verses from carols, and from excellent 
carols : but I protest that with " choirs and places 
where they sing" they will be found incongruous. 
Indeed, Mr. Bramley admits it. Of his collection 
"some," he says, *'from their legendary, festive or 
otherwise less serious character, are unfit for use 
within the church." 

Now since, as we know, these old carols were 
written to be sung in the open air, or in the halls 
and kitchens of private houses, I prefef to put Mr. 
Bramley's proposition conversely, and say that the 
church is an unsuitable place for carol singing. If 
the clergy persist in so confining it, they will no 
doubt in process of time evolve a number of new 
compositions which differ from ordinary hymns 
sufficiently to be called carols, but from which the 
peculiar charm of the carol has evaporated. This 
charm (let me add) by no means consists in mere 
primitiveness or mere archaism. Genuine carols (if 
we could only get rid of affectation and be honest 
authors in our own century without straining to age 
ourselves back into the fifteenth) might be written 
to-day as appropriately as ever. "Joseph did 
whistle," &c., was no less unsuited at the date of 
its composition to performance by a full choir in 

352 



DECEMBER 

a chancel than it is to-day. But whatever the 
precise nature of the charm may be, you can prove 
by a very simple experiment that such a performance 
tends to impair it. Assemble a number of caroUers 
about your doorstep or within your hall, and listen 
to their rendering of "The first good joy," or 
*' The angel Gabriel ; " then take them off to church 
and let them sing these same ditties to an organ 
accompaniment. You will find that, strive against 
it as they may, the tune drags slower and slower ; 
the poem has become a spiritless jingle, at once 
dismal and trivial. Take the poor thing out into the 
fresh air again and revive it with a fife and drum ; 
stay it with flagons and comfort it with apples, for 
it is sick of improper feeding. 

No, no : such a carol as " God rest you, merry 
gentlemen," has a note which neither is suited by, 
nor can be suited to, what people call " the sacred 
edifice": while '* Joseph was an old man," "I saw 
three ships" and "The first good joy" are plainly 
impossible. Associate them with organ and sur- 
pliced choir, and you are mixing up things that differ. 
Omit them, at the same time banning the house- 
to-house caroller, and you tyrannically limit men's 
devotional impulses. I am told that the clergy frown 
upon house-to-house carolling, because they believe 
it encourages drunkenness. Why then, let them take 
the business in hand and see that too much drink is 



353 
24 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



neither taken nor offered. This ought not to be very 
difficult. But, as with the old plays, so with carol- 
singing, it is easier and more consonant with the 
Puritan temper to abolish a practice than to elevate 
it and clear away abuses : and the half-instructed 
mind is taught with fatal facility to condemn use 
and abuse in a lump, to believe carol-singing a wile 
of the Evil One because Bill once went around 
carol-singing and came home drunk. 

In parishes where a more tolerant spirit prevails- 
I am glad to note that the old custom, and even a 
taste for the finer ditties, seem to be reviving. 
Certainly the caroUers visit us in greater numbers 
and sing with more evidence of careful practice than 
they did eight or ten years ago : and friends in various 
parts of England have a like story to tell. In this 
corner the rigour of winter does not usually begin 
before January, and it is no unusual thing to be able 
to sit out of doors in sunshine for an hour or so in 
the afternoon of Christmas Day. The vessels in 
sight fly their flags and carry bunches of holly at 
their topmast-heads : and I confess the day is made 
cheerfuUer for us if they are answered by the voices 
of carollers on the waterside, or if, walking inland, I 
hear the note of the clarionet in some " town-place " 
or meet a singing-party tramping between farm and 
farm. 



354 



DECEMBER 



That the fresh bloom of the carol was evanescent 
and all too easily destroyed I always knew; but 
never realised its extreme fugacity until, some five 
years ago, it fell to me to prepare an anthology, 
which, under the title of The Oxford Book of English 
Verse, has since achieved some popularity. I believed 
that previous English anthologists had unjustly, even 
unaccountably, neglected our English carols, and 
promised myself to redress the balance. I hunted 
through many collections, and brought together a 
score or so of pieces which, considered merely as 
carols, were gems of the first water. But no sooner 
did I set them among our finer lyrics than, to my 
dismay, their colours vanished ; the juxtaposition 
became an opposition which killed them, and all but 
half a dozen had to be withdrawn. There are few 
gems more beautiful than the amethyst : but an 
amethyst will not live in the company of rubies. A few 
held their own — the exquisite ** I sing of aMaiden " for 

instance — 

" I sing of a Maiden 
That is makeles ; ^ 
King of all kings 

To her son she ches.^ 

'' He came al so still 

There his mother was, 
As dew in April 

That falleth on the grass. 
1 Without a mate. ^ Chose. 

355 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



" He came al so still 

To his mother's hour, 
As dew in April 

That falleth on the flour. 

" He came al so still 

There his mother lay 
As dew in April 

That falleth on the spray. 

** Mother and maiden 

Was never none but she ; 
Well may such a lady 
Goddes mother be." 

or ** Lestenyt, lordings," or " Of one that is so fair 
and bright;" and my favourite, "The Seven Virgins," 
set among the ballads lost none of its lovely candour. 
But on the whole, and sorely against my will, it had 
to be allowed that our most typical carols will not 
bear an ordeal through which many of the rudest 
ballads pass safely enough. So it will be found, I 
suspect, with the carols of other nations. I take a 
typical English one, exhumed not long ago by 
Professor Fliigel from a sixteenth century MS. at 
Balliol College, Oxford, and pounced upon as a gem 
by two such excellent judges of poetry as Mr. Alfred 
W. Pollard and Mr. F. Sidgwick : — 

'* Can I not sing but Hoy ! 
The jolly shepherd made so much joy J 

356 



DECEMBER 



The shepherd upon a hill he sat, 
He had on him his tabard ^ and his hat, 
His tar-box, his pipe and his llagat ;^ 
And his name was called jolly, jolly Wat, 

For he was a good herd's-boy, 
Ut hoy ! 

For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

" The shepherd upon a hill was laid 
His dog to his girdle was tayd, 
He had not slept but a little braid 
But Gloria in excelsis was to him said 
Ut hoy ! 
For in his pipe he made so much joy. 

" The shepherd on a hill he stood, 
Round about him his sheep they yode,^ 
He put his hand under his hood, 
He saw a star as red as blood. 
Ut hoy ! 
For in his pipe he made so much joy." 

The shepherd of course follows the star, and it 
guides him to the inn and the Holy Family, whom 
he worships : — 

" ' Now farewell, mine own herdsman Wat ! ' 

' Yea, 'fore God, Lady, even so I hat :* 

Lull well Jesu in thy lap. 

And farewell Joseph, with thy round cap ! ' 

Ut hoy ! 

For in his pipe he made so much joy." 

1 Short coat. 2 Flagon. 3 Went. 

* Am hight, called. 

357 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



Set beside this the following Burgundian carol (of 
which, by the way, you will find a charming 
translation in Lady Lindsay's A Christmas Posy) : — 

'* Giullo, pran ton tamborin ; 
Toi, pran tai fleute, Robin. 
Au son de ces instruman — 
Turelurelu, patapatapan — 
Au son de ces instruman 
Je diron Noel gaiman. 

*' C'eto lai m6de autrefoi 
De loiie le Roi de Roi ; 
Au son de ces instruman — 
Turelurelu, patapatapan — 
Au son de ces instruman 
Ai nos an fau faire autan. 

*' Ce jor le Diale at ai cu, 
Ran dons an graice ai Jesu ; 
Au son de ces instruman — 
Turelurelu, patapatapan — 
Au son de ces instruman 
Fezon lai nique ai Satan. 

** L'homme et Dei son pu d'aicor 
Que lai fleute et le tambor. 
Au son de ces instruman — 
Turelurelu, patapatapan — 
Au son de ces instruman 
Chanton, danson, sautons-an ! " 

To set either of these delightful ditties alongside of 
the richly -jewelled lyrics of Keats or of Swinburne, 

358 



DECEMBER 

of Victor Hugo or of Gautier would be to sin 
against congruity, even as to sing them in church 
would be to sin against congruity. 

« * * * 

There was one carol, however, which I was fain 
to set alongside of " The Seven Virgins," and 
omitted only through a scruple in tampering with 
two or three stanzas, necessary to the sense, but in 
all discoverable versions so barbarously uncouth as 
to be quite inadmissible. And yet "The Holy Well" 
is one of the loveliest carols in the language, and I 
cannot give up hope of including it some day: for 
the peccant verses as they stand are quite evidently 
corrupt, and if their originals could be found I have 
no doubt that the result would be flawless beauty. 
Can any of my readers help to restore them ? 

'* The Holy Well," according to Mr. Bramley, is 
traditional in Derbyshire. "Joshua Sylvester," in A 
Garland of Christmas Carols, published in 1861, took 
his version from an eighteenth-century broadsheet 
printed at Gravesend, and in broadsheet forrr it 
seems to have been fairly common. I choose the 
version given by Mr. A. H. Bullen in his Caroh and 
Poems, published by Nimmo in 1886 : — 

"As it fell out one May morning, 
And upon one bright holiday, 
Sweet Jesus asked of His dear mother 
If He might go to play. 

359 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



" To play, to play, sweet Jesus shall go, 
And to play. pray get you gone ; 
And let me hear of no complaint 
At night when you come home. 

** Sweet Jesus went down to yonder town, 
As far as the Holy Well, 
And there did see as fine children. 
As any tongue can tell. 

'' He said, God bless you every one, 

And your bodies Christ save and see : 
Little children shall I play with you, 
And you shall play with Me ? " 

So far we have plain sailing ; but now, with the 
children's answer, comes the trouble : — 

" But they made answer to Him, No : 
They were lords' and ladies' sons ; 
And He, the meanest of them all, 
Was but a maiden's child, born in an ox's stall. 

" Sweet Jesus turn'd Him around, 
And He neither laughed nor smiled, 
But the tears came trickling from His eyes 
Like water from the skies." 

A glance, as I contend, shows these lines to be 
corrupt : they were not written, that is to say, in 
the above form, which violates metre and rhyme- 
arrangement, and is both uncouth and redundant. 
The carol now picks up its pace again and proceeds — 

360 



DECEMBER 



" Sweet Jesus turned Him round about, 
To His mother's dear home went He, 
And said, I have been in yonder town 
As far as you can see." 

Some versions give '* As after you can see." Jesus 
repeats the story precisely as it has been told, with 
His request to the children and their rude answera 
Whereupon Mary says : — 

" Though You are but a maiden's child. 
Born in an ox's stall. 
Though art the Christ, the King of Heaven, 
And the Saviour of them all. 

" Sweet Jesus, go down to yonder town 
As far as the Holy Well, 
And take away those sinful souls 
And dip them deep in Hell. 

" Nay, nay, sweet Jesus said, 
Nay, nay, that may not be ; 
There are too many sinful souls 
Crying out for the help of Me." 

On this exquisite close the carol might well end, 
as Mr. Bullen with his usual fine judgment makes it 
end. But the old copies give an additional stanza, 
and a very silly one : — 

" O then spoke the angel Gabriel, 
Upon one good St. Stephen, 
Although you 're but a maiden's child, 
You are the King of Heaven." 

361 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



'* One good St. Stephen " is obviously an ignorant 
misprint for "one good set Steven," i.e. "appointed 
time," and so it appears in Mr. Bramley's book, and 
in Mr. W. H. Husk's Songs of the Nativity. 
But the stanza is fooHsh, and may be dismissed. 
To amend the text of the children's ansv^er is less 
legitimate. Yet one feels sorely tempted ; and 
I cannot help suggesting that the original ran 
something like this : — 

" But they made answer to Him, No : 
They were lords and ladies all ; 
And He was but a maiden's child, 
Born in an ox's stall. 

" Sweet Jesus turned Him round about, 
And He neither laughed nor smiled, 
But the tears came trickling from His eyes 
To be but a maiden's child. . . ." 

I plead for this suggestion: (i) that it adds nothing 
to the text and changes but one word ; (2) that it 
removes nothing but the weak and unrhyming "Like 
water from the skies"; and (3) that it leads directly 
to Mary's answer : — 

" Though you are but a maiden's child, 
Born in an ox's stall," &c. 

But it were better to hunt out the original than 
362 



DECEMBER 



to accept any emendation ; and I hope you will 
agree that the original of this little poem, so 
childlike and delicately true, is worth hunting for. 
''The carol," says Mr. Husk, ''has a widely-spread 
popularity. On a broadside copy printed at Graves- 
end " — presumably the one from which " Joshua 
Sylvester " took his version — " there is placed 
immediately under the title a woodcut purporting 
to be a representation of the site of the Holy Well, 
Palestine; but the admiration excited thereby for 
the excellent good taste of the printer is too soon 
alas ! dispelled, for between the second and 
third stanzas we see another woodcut represent- 
ing a feather-clad-and-crowned negro seated on 
a barrel, smoking — a veritable ornament of a 
tobacconists' paper." 



One of the finest carols written of late years is 
Miss Louise Imogen Guiney's TrysU Noel. It is 
deliberately archaic, and (for reasons hinted at above) 
I take deliberate archaism to be about the worst 
fault a modern carol-writer can commit. Also it 
lacks the fine simplicity of Christina Rossetti's 
In the bleak midwinter. I ought to dislike it, 
too, for its sophisticated close. Yet its curious 
rhythm and curious words haunt me in spite of 
all prejudice : — 



363 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



" The Ox he openeth wide the Doore 
And from the Snowe he calls her inne ; 
And he hath seen her smile therefore, 
Our Ladye without sinne. 
Now soone from Sleepe 
A Starre shall leap, 
And soone arrive both King and Hinde : 

Amen, Amen ; 
But O the Place cou'd I but finde ! 

" The Ox hath husht his Voyce and bent 
Trewe eye of Pity ore the Mow ; 
And on his lovelie Neck, forspent, 
The Blessed lays her Browe. 
Around her feet 
Full Warme and Sweete 
His bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell ; 

Amen, Amen; 
But sore am I with vaine Travel ! 

" The Ox is Host in Juda's stall, 
And Host of more than onely one, 
For close she gathereth withal 
Our Lorde, her little Sonne. 
Glad Hinde and King 
Their Gyfte may bring, 
But wou'd to-night my Teares were there ; 

Amen, Amen; 
Between her Bosom and His hayre! " 



The days are short. I return from this Christmas 
364 



DECEMBER 



ramble and find it high time to hght the lamp and 
pull the curtains over my Cornish Window. 

*' The days are sad — it is the Holy tide : 

The Winter morn is short, the Night is long ; 
So let the lifeless Hours be glorified 

With deathless thoughts and echo'd in sweet song : 
And through the sunset of this purple cup 

They will resume the roses of their prime, 
And the old Dead will hear us and wake up, 

Pass with dim smiles and make our hearts sublime ! " 

Friends dead and friends afar — I remember you at 
this season, here with the log on the hearth, the 
holly around the picture frames and the wine at my 
elbow. One glass in especial to you, my old friend 
in the far north ! — 

CHRISTMAS EVE 

-" Friend, old friend in the manse by the fireside 
sitting, 
Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the 
log, 
You with a book on your knee, your wife with her 
knitting. 
Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog — 

^* Silent here in the south sit I, and, leaning. 

One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand, 
Gazes deep in its heart — but ah ! its meaning 
Rather I read in the shadows and understand. 

365 



FROM A CORNISH WINDOW 



■ Dear, kind, she is ; and daily dearer, kinder. 

Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves ; 
Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind her 
Lit up a name in the leathern dusk of the shelves. 

' Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding : 
Yet there is one gives back to the winter grate 
Gold of a sunset flooding a college building, 
Gold of an hour I waited — as now I wait — 

' For a light step on the stair, a girl's low laughter, 
Rustle of silks, shy knuckles tapping the oak. 
Dinner and mirth upsetting my rooms, and, after. 
Music, waltz upon waltz, till the June day broke. 

' Where is her laughter now ? Old tarnished covers — 
You that reflect her with fresh young face unchanged — 
Tell that we met, that we parted, not as lovers : 

Time, chance, brought us together, and these 
estranged. 

' Loyal we were to the mood of the moment granted, 
Bruised not its bloom, but danced on the wave of its 

joy ; 

Passion, wisdom, fell back like a wall enchanted 
Ringing a floor for us both — Heaven for the boy ! 

' Where is she now ? Regretted not, though departed, 
Blessings attend and follow her all her days ! 
— Look to your hound : he dreams of the hares he 
started. 
Whines, and awakes, and stretches his limbs to the 
blaze. 

366 



DECEMBER 

*' Far old friend in the manse, by the grey ash peeling 
Flake by flake from the heat in the Yule log's core, 
Look past the woman you love — On wall and ceiling 
Climbs not a trellis of roses — and ghosts — oF yore ? 

" Thoughts, thoughts ! Whistle them back like hounds 
returning — 
Mark how her needles pause at a sound upstairs. 
Time for bed, and to leave the log's heart burning ! 
Give ye good-night, but first thank God in your 
prayers ! " 



THE END 



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